


City of Angels

by fancyasscheeseballs (girlattherockshow)



Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [9]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Anna is a badass, Child Abuse, Dealing With Loss, Eventual Smut, F/M, Feelings, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and stuff, Grief, Guilt, Jealous Rafael, Los Angeles, Meeting the Parents, Shared Grief, Shower Sex, Vacation, What Barba does on suspension, all of the fluff, and in which his girlfriend realizes how thankful she is for him, gaze upon my kinks, in which rafael realizes how goddamn lucky he is, recovering from grief, sex in a bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:33:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22385725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlattherockshow/pseuds/fancyasscheeseballs
Summary: Rafael's been suspended, so since he can't work, he and Anna decide to get outta town for a while. They're off to her hometown of Los Angeles so that he can meet her parents and learn how the love of his life became the woman she is. Many adventures to come!
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Original Character(s), Rafael Barba/Original Female Character(s)
Series: An Unlikely Love: Rafael & Anna [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597711
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30





	1. Better Than That

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So, this multi-chapter arc is going to be set in Los Angeles. It was a lot of fun for me to start writing this arc because I used to live in L.A. (okay, I lived in Orange County, but spent 99% of my time in L.A. when I wasn’t at work or school). A lot of the things I’m going to write about are places I’ve been and things I’ve done.
> 
> Song: I Can Do Better Than That by Anna Kendrick

“Are you excited to finally have a vacation?” Anna asked as they stepped into the plane.

“I mean, I’d rather not be taking one in these circumstances,” Rafael replied. “But I guess it’s better than sitting at home stewing.” He lifted both their carry-ons into the overhead bin and sat down next to the window; Anna insisted he take that seat so that he could watch as they went over the mountains and descended into the city. She sat next to him and, although she tried to hide it, he could sense her disappointment. He immediately grabbed her hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry, _mi amor_. I don’t mean to sound—I just wish I were meeting your parents under better circumstances.”

She squeezed his hand. “I know, honey, but they don’t need to know why we’re coming. All they know is that you had some well-deserved time off. It’s not exactly a lie.” She hesitated. “You’re sure you can afford to—”

He nodded. “I haven’t exactly had a life until the last year and a half. A month of missed pay isn’t going to devastate me.”

“I suppose it helps that we’re staying in my parents’ guest house. You’re sure you don’t mind _that_?”

“I’m positive,” he replied, kissing her hand again. “I’m happy as long as I’m with you.”

“Laying it on thick today,” she smirked. “I like Vacation Rafael already.”

The plane began to push back from the gate and the flight attendants began the usual safety lecture. Anna was sure she was the only person to actually pay attention to the safety lecture every time she flew. It wasn’t so much that she thought she would ever need to know how to open an emergency exit door; it was more that she thought it was rude _not_ to pay attention.

This was not lost on Rafael. He smiled at her thoughtfulness. She wanted everyone to feel like they mattered, regardless of whether they were a flight attendant or the District Attorney. She left “thank you” messages on bar tabs and never wanted to go into a store if they were half an hour from closing—she knew from her time working in college and law school that last-minute shoppers were the bane of the service industry. It was just another reason for him to adore her.

They spent the four-hour flight alternating between playing twenty questions (Rafael was amazed that there were still things he didn’t know about her after all this time), doing crossword puzzles, and taking catnaps on each other’s shoulders. By the time they landed, got their suitcases—no easy feat in LAX—and picked up the rental car, they were both exhausted.

“I’m driving,” she declared as they walked to the garage to find the car.

“I’m not arguing. I haven’t driven a car in years.”

“Why would you, in New York City?” she asked, more a statement than a question. “That said, you don’t want to try and get back into the habit in Los Angeles. I’m surprised I managed to learn at all out here.” When she had booked the rental car, she asked for the smallest one possible. Parallel parking was the only real option outside of valet in most places, and it was infinitely easier without an SUV. Thankfully the agency had paid attention and given her a Camry.

Rafael loaded the bags into the car and got in the passenger side. While Anna was adjusting the mirrors and familiarizing herself with the layout of the car, he checked his phone. She gave him a sideways glance. “Hey, you know I’m not working,” he said.

She started the car and made her way out of the garage. “Am I allowed to laugh at that?”

He gave her a half-smile. “You’re the only one allowed to laugh at it. I was just letting Mom know we landed. As of now and until I’m back at the office, my work doesn’t exist. For once, vacation is vacation.”

“Those are the most beautiful words you’ve ever said to me.” She reached into her bag with one hand to grab her oversized, black sunglasses.

He suppressed a laugh. “Think you’re a movie star, do you?”

“When in Rome…” He pulled his out of her bag as well—thank God for her penchant for huge purses—and it was only then that she noticed they weren’t the aviators that he’d had forever and which she _hated_. “Oh, thank the Lord,” she muttered.

“Sorry?”

She turned onto West Century and headed toward Sepulveda. “Nothing.”

“No, seriously, what?”

“No, seriously, I need to focus. It’s not as important as my not crashing the car while trying to make this lane change…”

He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said you learned to drive here?”

“I did,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean anyone _else_ knows how to drive.” Thankfully, the driver in the lane she needed to be in let her merge over and she gave him the customary rearview-window wave. _Even in a city known for road rage_ , he thought, _she’s trying to be polite._

“So how long does it take to get from here to your parents’ house?” he asked.

“Uh, that depends. Right now, there’s no really good way to go because the freeways are a mess at this time of day but taking surface streets will take just as long. So I might as well just take you up the 405 and then circle back around the 101. It’ll at least give you a nice view of the Canyons and the Getty Museum, which I’m going to insist we go to.” She knew none of what she just said would make any sense to Rafael, but she figured there would be plenty of time to explain everything. Right now, she just wanted to get to her parents’ house without dying in a fiery collision.

It took over an hour to head north just to go back south, but Rafael didn’t mind. It gave him the opportunity to get a sense of the landscape. Anna was right; the view as they reached the canyons was impressive. The Getty Museum, as she pointed out, was situated on a hill high atop the city, and he imagined the view there would be incredible. They passed through Studio City and Universal City, which contained several of the major movie studios. Finally, they were able to get off the freeway and traveled down a few surface streets until Anna turned into the driveway of an enormous, Spanish-style building that stretched from the street to sit atop a hill. It was undoubtedly the biggest house he’d ever seen. He turned to her.

 _“Mierda,_ this is your house?!” he asked, eyes wide.

“Well, it’s my _parents’_ house. I tried to warn you when I asked if you would mind staying here.”

“You said their house was ‘fairly large.’ This is a damn palace!”

“Don’t be such a _drama queen_.” She winked at him. He gave her a look of faux annoyance. The same name she had used as an insult a month ago was now an inside joke between them. “Anyway, don’t feel bad. The guest house isn’t nearly as nice.”

“Oh, yeah, okay. And this is just a simple home for two.”

She laughed and turned the car off. “Okay, the only shitty part is we’re going to have to climb the stairs with our bags. But at least we’ll get a workout in, since we’re going to be driving everywhere this week.”

Before she reached for the door handle, he put a hand on her neck and pulled her back toward him. “Is the guest house detached?”

She suppressed a smile. “Yes…”

He leaned in and put his lips next to her ear. “Then I think we’ll get plenty of exercise, _cariño_ ,” he said, voice low and deep. She kept her reaction as invisible as possible, though he knew perfectly well that when he used that voice, she would immediately feel the reverberation between her thighs. She bit back a moan.

“ _Rafael Eduardo Barba,_ ” she said, emphasizing every part of his name. “You are _terrible_.”

“Vacation Rafael is even more terrible than New York Rafael, I assure you,” he said with a wink. Then, he got out of the car as if he hadn’t just growled dirty things into her ear.

“Just wait til Vacation Anna gets Vacation Rafael into bed,” she muttered to the air, before exiting the car as well.

By the time they reached the top of the stairs with their luggage, Rafael was thankful that he and Anna had such an active sex life—otherwise he might have passed out from the exertion. He caught his breath and glanced over at her. She looked slightly nervous. “ _Amor,_ are you okay?”

She nodded. “I just haven’t seen them since—you know. And it’s not the same as talking to them on the phone. _And_ ”—she bit her lip—“it’s the first time I’ve brought a guy home.”

“Hey,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her fingertips. “It’s going to be fine. If anything, I’m the one who should be nervous. It’s been decades since I met a girlfriend’s parents.”

She soothed at that fact. “Okay, ready?”

“If you are.”

Before Anna could even touch the handle, the door swung open and a middle-aged woman with close-cropped, gray hair and Anna’s eyes greeted them with a wide smile. Next to her stood a lanky man, about the same age as his wife, with salt-and-pepper hair and deep brown eyes. He actually looked alarmingly like Jack McCoy, if Jack McCoy was wearing glasses and jeans.

As apprehensive as Anna had been just seconds before, those feelings fell away as she flung herself into her mother’s arms. “Hi, Ma!”

“Oh, honey! It’s so good to see you!” Her mother squeezed her daughter so tightly that Anna nearly ran out of breath. When she finally let go, Anna turned to her dad.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said as she and her father embraced tenderly. It was clear to Rafael that while her dad may not have been quite so expressive as her mother, he missed Anna just as much.

“Hi, Nanner,” her dad replied, kissing her on the top of her head. Rafael had to suppress a stupidly wide grin at the nickname he didn’t know existed. He made a mental note to ask her about it later.

Anna groaned. “Oh, God, Dad, you don’t know what you’ve just done.” She turned back toward Rafael and took him by the hand, bringing him inside the foyer. “Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet Rafael Barba. Rafael, this are my parents, Miriam and Joseph.”

Rafael extended his hand and gave Joseph his best lawyer handshake. At least the District Attorney couldn’t take _that_ from him. When he attempted to do the same to Miriam, she instead embraced him in a warm hug, which startled him, but not necessarily in a bad way. “It’s so good to finally meet you, Mister and—”

“Oh, none of that,” Miriam said. “Miriam and Joseph, please.”

Rafael was immediately more comfortable. “Well, at any rate, Anna has told me so much about you that I feel like I already know you.”

“We could say the same about you,” Joseph replied. “Whenever we talk to Anna, it’s Rafael this and Rafael that.” Rafael blushed, a rare occurrence.

“Well, come in!” Miriam exclaimed. “Joseph will get your bags.”

“Oh, no, let me help—” Rafael started, but Miriam grabbed him by the arm.

“Nonsense. You’re a guest in this house. You’ll do nothing of the sort.”

Rafael looked slightly stunned and glanced at Anna. “Don’t argue with her,” she said. “You are the most brilliant attorney I know, but you will _never_ win an argument with my mother.”

Miriam laughed, and Rafael realized she had the same laugh as Anna—it lit up her entire face. “Dinner will be ready in just a few minutes. I hope you like brisket.”

As Joseph put their bags in the guest house for them, Anna took Rafael on a quick tour of the house. There were three bedrooms as well as three full bathrooms upstairs and a half-bath on the main floor. The fourth bedroom and bathroom were in the guest house. To one side of the foyer was a large living room with two couches facing each other on either side of a reclaimed-wood coffee table. To the other side was a sunroom that led to a terrace, which is where they would be eating dinner, as the evening had cooled to a reasonable temperature. The kitchen was enormous and modern and led to a dining room that Anna said they hardly ever used, favoring the breakfast nook instead.

The house was definitely more opulent than any other he’d ever been in, but it also felt very much like a home. There were family photos everywhere—although Rafael noticed that Anna’s brother was absent from most of them—and lots of Judaica. What really caught his eye, though, was the pile of mail on a table in the living room and the three pairs of shoes in a jumbled pile near the front door. That was how he knew Anna really was her parents’ daughter—she would happily leave mail stacked on their coffee table for months unless he went through it, and she always had at least two pairs of shoes near the front door, forgotten the second she took them off.

Anna took him by the arm. “Come on. Let’s go in the kitchen. There’s wine, and I’m sure my dad will be happy to have someone to share bourbon with.”

“What kind of bourbon does he drink?”

She made a face. “Same stuff you do, all of it horrible.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m going to find one you like eventually.”

“My father has been saying that to my mother for the last thirty years. Maybe you’ll be saying the same thing to me in the next thirty,” she said with a wink. And as she led him to the kitchen, the only thing he could think was, _you have no idea._

* * *

“So, I got the conviction,” Rafael said, “but the judge, in his infinite wisdom, decided to set it aside. That almost _never_ happens, and this certainly wasn’t a case that called for it.”

They had just had one of the best dinners he had ever eaten—slow-cooker brisket with homemade barbecue sauce, potato pancakes, almond green beans, and challah that Miriam had baked fresh that morning. They had eaten _al fresco_ on the terrace overlooking the hills as the sun set over the horizon. The buildings and cars twinkled in the dimming light, making the city seem like it was shimmering. For as much as he loved New York City’s skyline, he thought, he could get used to this.

As they ate, Anna’s parents—well, mostly her mother—had grilled him about most of his life, to Anna’s great embarrassment. Miriam had just asked what his worst loss and greatest victories in court were. He started with the worst. If he had been completely honest, he would have said not putting William Lewis away for everything he did to Olivia, but he didn’t feel the need to bring up that horror show. Instead, he opted for the most devastating legal loss—the case against a frat boy who, along with a second kid who took a plea, sexually assaulted an adult film actress and got away with it after the judge set aside the verdict and then lectured the victim about “respecting her body.”

“Good Lord,” Joseph said, horrified by Rafael’s description of what the judge had said to the victim after he set aside the verdict. “Could you appeal?”

“I did,” Rafael replied, “but not before I let the judge have it in open court.”

“Really?” Miriam asked, eyebrows raising slightly.

He took a sip of his scotch. “Yep. I told him that he was doing the jury’s job, and that he was setting rape laws back fifty years. Got right up to the bench before he threatened to hold me in contempt. I think that was the closest I ever came to being jailed.”

“Is he still on the bench, by the way?” Anna asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Weirdest part of the whole thing was that during the trial, when the defendant’s attorney went after the victim on the stand, the judge kept warning him and asking him to treat her with respect. Then he turns around and does that. It was bizarre. But apparently, that wasn’t the first time he’d done it. It was just the first time I’d heard about it. He ended up getting recalled.”

“Good!” Miriam said. “So, what was your greatest victory, then?”

He didn’t even have to think about it. “Anna’s. I know that sounds—well, I know how it sounds. But it’s the truth. The guy was one of the worst predators I’ve seen, and that’s saying something. He did it to multiple women. It’s just that Anna was the first one to report it. Without her, he’d still be out there doing what he did to God knows how many more women. I’m always happy to take rapists off the streets, but it’s especially gratifying to remove them from positions of power, because too many of them hunt from those positions.”

Joseph glanced over at his daughter, who was looking at Rafael as though she’d never heard this before. It was clearly not something she was expecting. The truth was, she _hadn’t_ heard this before. For all their time together, she and Rafael rarely talked about anything related to her case. She honestly wasn’t sure if that was by design or just the way conversations flowed. It sometimes felt like she had two lifetimes—and the second one started a year and a half ago with a visit to his office, so there was no need to bring up the first one, where she’d been hurt.

“Wow,” Miriam replied, sipping her wine. “You know, lawyers get a bad name, but if more of them were like you—”

Anna suppressed a grin. “The world would wear a lot more suspenders.” Rafael turned toward her and the look on her face combined with the fact that she was very clearly flirting with him right in front of her parents made them both burst out laughing. That sent a ripple effect to Miriam and Joseph as well, and before they knew it, another hour had passed, full of laughter and wine and stories about Anna’s childhood and highlights from Miriam and Joseph’s medical careers. “So, change of topic to something very important: is there dessert?” Anna finally asked.

Joseph shook his head. “Do you really need to ask that question?”

Miriam rose to her feet and started collecting their plates. “I made your favorite—black forest cake—and also _pastelitos de guayaba_.”

Rafael’s eyes widened. “You made _pastelitos_?”

Anna looked toward the sky, playing innocent. “I might have mentioned to my mother that that’s your favorite dessert. And I may have called _your_ mother for the recipe and passed it along…”

It was not often that Rafael was at a loss for words, but this was one of those moments. “I—I really don’t know what to say!”

“Oh my God, Ma, you accomplished the impossible!” Anna said, wide-eyed and feigning shock.

“Very funny,” he replied. Then he turned toward Miriam. “You _really_ didn’t have to go through all that trouble!”

Miriam shook her head. “It was no trouble at all. Your mother’s recipe was very detailed. Besides, how many times can you bake chocolate chip cookies before you get bored?”

“Well, in return, let me help you with those.” He held out his hands to take the plates from her. Miriam was going to refuse, but Anna cleared her throat.

“Ma, he’s just as stubborn as you. Besides, it’ll be easier for both of you to bring dessert out than just you.”

Miriam sighed. “Okay, you win this time. But don’t get used to it!” She handed him the plates and he followed her into the house.

When he was gone, Anna turned to her father, who was nursing his second glass of bourbon. “So, what do you think?”

Joseph laughed. “Now I know why you pushed him off on your mother. You’ve been dying to ask me that all night, haven’t you?”

Anna lowered her eyes sheepishly. “I’m serious, Dad.”

Her father looked past her into the house, as if he were trying to see Rafael through the walls. “Well, we’ve only known him for a few hours, but as of now, he’s done nothing to make me want to throw him off this terrace.”

She threw her head back laughing. “Oh, yeah, okay, Dad. Like you’re really _that_ father.”

Joseph set his glass down and reached for his daughter’s hand, suddenly very serious. “After what happened to you, I’ve _become_ that father. I don’t want you to ever be hurt like that again.”

Anna felt tears behind her eyes. Her father was never one for sentiment, at least not outwardly, so this was a very new side of him. “Dad, I promise you, there is not even a sliver of a chance that he would ever hurt me like that. He’s the one who helped me start healing from it.”

Joseph kissed her hand, still wrapped in his. “I know, and I’m grateful to him for that. And I’m glad that he was, and is, there for you. But I’m still sorry we weren’t,” he said, a hint of sadness in his voice.

She put her other hand to his cheek. “You and Mom didn’t have to be there physically to be there for me. You were always there when I needed to talk, and I knew that if I ever asked to come home, I’d have a plane ticket waiting for me at the airport. That meant everything to me.”

It was when she mentioned the plane ticket that she realized this was her and Rafael’s first vacation together and here they were, spending the first night of it with her parents. There was something crazy about that—maybe even a little weird. But when Rafael and her mother came outside with the cake and the pastries and another bottle of wine, engaged in a lively conversation about other desserts, Anna realized that there was no place she would rather be.

* * *

Despite Anna’s attempts to play it down, Rafael thought the guest house was just a smaller version of the main house. Besides the main living areas, there was a balcony off of the bedroom that had two wicker chairs and a small table—perfect for morning coffee and a crossword puzzle, he imagined—and a walk-in closet. The bathroom was the most insane thing, though; all granite and marble with an enormous walk-in shower with a rain shower head, as well as a soaking tub, both big enough for two people. In other words, he thought, that bathroom was designed for sex.

They had just finished putting their clothes away, so Anna finally took her hair down from the ponytail it had been in since that morning. She winced as her scalp relaxed, and then ran her hands through her hair, shaking it out. “I thought that went well.”

Rafael was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and said something she couldn’t understand. A minute later she heard the water run and then he came back into the bedroom. “I can’t believe your mom made dessert for me.”

“I can. I’m just glad _your_ mom was happy to help. How’d she do, by the way?”

Rafael looked around as if they were being watched. “I will deny ever saying this, but”—he lowered his voice conspiratorially—“they were almost as good as my mom’s.”

Anna laughed. “Well, now I have blackmail!”

“I said I’d deny it!”

“Yeah, but your mom likes me more, so she’ll believe me.” It took him a second to reply, and for a moment, Anna was afraid she’d offended him somehow. “Raf, I didn’t mean—”

“Do you think they liked me?”

He said it so quickly that she almost didn’t register the words, and she swore she heard apprehension in his voice. She smiled at him encouragingly. “Raf, they liked you before we got on the plane.” He sat down next to her and she ran a hand down his back, giving him goosebumps. “My dad wasn’t kidding when he said that when I talked to them, it was always your name coming up. That was even the case before we—” She stopped suddenly and turned pink.

He raised an eyebrow. “Before we what?”

She shifted on the bed. “I—well, before we started dating, I would still talk about you. I told them how smart you were and how funny and—”

“No one has ever called me funny.”

She put her head on his shoulder. “That’s because you don’t let people see that side of you very often.” She glanced at the clock. “I’m going to go take a shower before it gets too late.” She kissed him on the cheek and grabbed her bathrobe from the back of the bedroom door. Just before she went into the bathroom, she turned around. “And by the way, you should.”

“Should what?”

She shrugged. “Let people see that side of you. There’s nothing wrong with having a silly side.” With that, she disappeared into the bathroom. After the water started running, he went to the kitchen and got two bottles of water from the fridge to keep on their nightstands and stopped to adjust the thermostat. When he got back into the bedroom, he heard sounds coming from behind the bathroom door. Curious, he opened it as quietly as he could and realized that there was music playing; there must have been a waterproof speaker in there. But it wasn’t just the recording he heard—it was Anna’s voice. She was singing along.

_“I want you and you and nothing but you, miles and piles of you…finally, I’ll have something worthwhile to think of each morning…”_

Whatever this song was, he liked it. Based on the emotion with which she sang, Anna did too. He couldn’t help it—he had to glance around the corner just for a moment. It wasn’t something sexual; he just wanted to see if she looked as cute as she sounded. Sure enough, through the frosted glass shower door, he could see her blurry silhouette moving with the beat as she washed her hair.

_“You and you and nothing but you, no substitution will do…nothing but fresh, undiluted and pure…top of the line and totally mine…”_

The last note was high and drawn-out, and she hit it slightly off-key but with such enthusiasm that it didn’t even matter. She was perfectly adorable, and he found himself smiling so hard that his cheeks hurt.

_“When we get to my house, take a look at that town, take a look at how far I’ve gone…I will never go back, never look back anymore…and it feels like my life led right to your side and will keep me there from now on…”_

The lyrics were eerily accurate and appropriate, he realized. They were in her house, in the town where she grew up, and that line made him realize how far both of them had come from the lives they were leading before meeting each other. Life had led her to him—in the most fucked up way, but still, they were together now. He didn’t remember what his world was like before he loved her, and he didn’t care to.

_“Think about what you wanted, think about what could be…think about how I love you; say you’ll move in with me…think of what’s great about me and you…think of the bullshit we’ve both been through…think of what’s past, because we can do better…”_

Both of them had gone through unbelievable pain in their lives—although he would argue hers was worse—and somehow, they had stumbled into this happiness, despite some self-sabotage on his part and some apprehension on hers. Two years ago, he never would have imagined being able to feel this way about another person. But now, here that person was, singing loudly in the shower, unrestrained and unashamed, and that was all it took to make his heart swell.

_“We can do better than that!”_

And as quickly as the song ended, he was in love with her, all over again.

* * *

After her shower, Anna was one hundred percent ready for a good night’s sleep, and she was sure Rafael was too. It was eleven o’clock in Los Angeles, but they were still operating on New York time. She realized she hadn’t brought her pajamas into the bathroom with her and hoped he wasn’t asleep yet so that she didn’t have to creep around in the dark looking for them. She tied her bathrobe at her waist and quietly opened the bathroom door, only to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, exactly where she had left him. The lights were dimmed now, there were two bottles of water on the nightstand, and he was wearing pajama pants, but other than that, it was as if he hadn’t moved the whole time she was in the shower.

“Raf? You okay?”

At first, he didn’t say anything. He just looked at her, head tilted just so, eyes flickering back and forth across her face. It was a look she didn’t recognize, which was surprising because she thought she had seen every facial expression he had. He seemed like he was considering her. Then, he held out his hand to her. She smiled softly and took it, and he pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms around her waist, turning his head to the side and pressing it to her abdomen. He just held her like that for a minute, and, not knowing what else to do, Anna lovingly ran her hands through his hair.

Finally, he pulled back and looked up at her. “Do you know how much I love you?”

She smiled. “I kind of have an idea, but you’re welcome to remind me.”

His eyes locked onto hers. “You have no idea what you do to me.”

“Oh, yeah? Maybe you should show me.” She started to climb on top of him, but he gently stopped her. She gave him a curious look. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s not that I don’t want you. I _always_ want you. But I don’t just mean _that_ way.” He pulled her down to sit next to him and ran his hands from her neck to her shoulders and down her arms. Even with the fabric of her bathrobe covering her, she got chills from his touch. When she looked into his eyes, Anna noticed that they seemed shockingly green in this light—even more so than usual. “Anna, you—you have no idea—” His voice started to break.

This was becoming alarming. “Raf, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

There were tears in his eyes, but he started to laugh. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s the point.”

She squinted at him. “I’m…glad?”

He took her face in his hands then and kissed her. It wasn’t passionate or needy, though. This kiss was more like the ones he would give her when he would walk her to her door after dates, before they’d ever slept together. His tongue only barely slipped into her mouth; he was more focused on the feel of her lips under his, remembering the first time he’d done this. She had shown up at his door unexpectedly after he’d basically insulted her and kissed him. At the time, he had absolutely no idea why, but he knew that if he didn’t kiss her back, he would regret it forever. She was beautiful and soft and kissed like she meant it. Since then, they’d shared thousands of kisses, but nothing like that first one—until now.

Anna put her hands on his wrists as he cupped her face, wondering what had gotten into him and at the same time not caring. She just focused on how he felt and tasted and the way his touch drove all her senses into overdrive. She had loved him for so long that it felt like second nature now, and when he kissed her this way, she remembered how it felt to come to that love. They gravitated toward each other in every way, and the pull only got stronger every day.

When he pulled away, he brought her toward him and buried his face in her neck, smelling the peaches and cream shampoo she used. How had he ever lived without that scent on his pillows? His scruff dragged along her skin just slightly as he nuzzled her, moving from her neck to her cheek to her shoulder. It seemed like he was marking her, but he wasn’t. It was just that he wanted her scent on him, so that he would never have to go without it.

Listening to her sing earlier, something in his heart had shifted. It was like it made more room for his love for her. He wanted to be as close to her as he could be. He wanted her to know how he felt about her. He wanted her to know how absolutely beautiful she was. So he put his hand on the belt of her robe and pulled it loose, the warmth of her skin radiating onto his. He looked up at her through his lashes, and she nodded at him, her breath hitching in her chest. He reached up and slid the robe off of her.

Even though he had seen her nude hundreds of times, as with their kiss, it was like the first time all over again. He kissed her again and felt her hands wrap around the back of his neck, playing with his hair. He broke away long enough to remove his pajamas and slowly, he inched her toward the headboard. Then he gently turned her until she was on her right side. He laid down next to her, wrapped her in his thick arms, and ran his hands down her spine. She felt goosebumps dot her entire body with just that one motion.

“I love you, Rafael,” she said.

And then something broke loose inside of him, something more powerful than lust and more precious than the ring that was hidden inside his suitcase. He looked long into her eyes, wanting her to see the love he had for her, to _feel_ it, as though she were inside his heart. Then he realized she already was.

He urged her onto her back and climbed over her, bracing himself on his forearms. He kissed her forehead tenderly, peppered her mouth and her cheeks with little pecks, gave her tiny love bites on her neck, and made his way down her body, touching and kissing every inch of skin that he could reach. He was almost painfully hard, but he didn’t want to do anything about it. He wanted— _oh_ , he just wanted to touchher. It was _everything_ to him. _She_ was everything to him.

Anna writhed beneath him, turned on but somehow not desperate to have sex. It was more than that. The way his fingertips ghosted over her hips and her sides and her calves wasn’t a warmup. It was the whole game. She had never been touched this way and she never wanted anyone but him to touch her like this again. And then she heard him start muttering something against her abdomen as he kissed his way across it.

“I want you…and you…and nothing but you…” he said, and she knew instantly what it meant. Ordinarily she would have been embarrassed by him having overheard her singing, but if this was the reaction it got, then she would start doing it every day.

“You and you and nothing but you, no substitution will do,” she replied.

She felt him smile against the inside of her left thigh, which he was caressing with his cheek while he ran his hand over the right one. “It feels like my life led right to your side and will keep me there from now on…”

He moved his hands back up and over her breasts, the rest of him following. She felt his body move against her as he came toward her, and it set her aflame. His chest pressed against hers, his hair tickling just slightly. Even without sex, they were totally wrapped up in one another.

She craned her neck up to kiss him again and ran her hands down his back, feeling ropes of muscle flex under her hands. She wondered if anyone he knew realized how built he actually was underneath all his Armani, and then realized she hoped they didn’t. She was selfish; she wanted him all to herself.

“Think about what you wanted, think about what could be…” she whispered. And then she felt tears on her clavicle. “What’s wrong?”

His eyebrows were knotted together, and his jaw was trembling, although she couldn’t tell whether it was from clenching it or from biting back a sob. He brushed her hair back and pressed his forehead to hers. His eyes closed as if he was concentrating very hard on something. “Anna—I—I don’t just love you—when I said you don’t know what you do to me—” He inhaled deeply and opened his eyes, looking straight into hers. “You’re everything to me. You’re my life. I’m in love with you, Anna. I’m just sorry it took me so long to say it.”

All the air in her lungs left her body in one breath. “I’m sorry, too.”

He looked at her quizzically. “For what, _mi amor_?”

She put a hand to his cheek, wiping away his tears. “Because I’ve been in love with you for a long time, and I should have said it sooner, too.”

Over the next hour, Rafael and Anna discovered each other again, physically _and_ emotionally. He told her how beautiful she was, how he always wanted to touch her, how much better he slept with her next to him every night. She told him that she felt safe in his arms, that she loved the way he looked in the morning, rumpled in a way that only she got to see. She told him that he was the love of her life; that she would never want anyone else; that there _was_ no one else for her. He kissed her over and over, worshiped her body, and sang her a lullaby in Spanish as she fell asleep in his arms. Not long after, he fell asleep too, right beside her, as he always would be.


	2. No More Yesterdays

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael asks Anna to take him places that made her who she is. She agrees, but ends up learning more about him than she ever expected to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo as it turns out, the three-episode Los Angeles arc is gonna probably be more like five chapters because ya girl is a wordy bitch and can’t stop writing long things. I needed to break this up, so you get a new chapter now. This is a whole lot of fluff plus angst (fangst?) and a lot of *feelings*. Trigger warning: discussions of child abuse lie herein.
> 
> Thank you as always to tumblr users @madpanda75, @thatesqcrush, and @misssirenlove for their continued love, support, friendship, and endless amounts of encouragement. I wouldn’t be half as good a writer if not for you guys. (Also, check out madpanda and thatesqcrush's fics - they are AMAZING).
> 
> And thank you for EVERYONE who reads and comments on these stories. Seriously, you have no idea how happy it makes me to wake up to 23940832048 tumblr notifications. :)
> 
> Song: Parachute by Train

The early morning light streamed in through the blinds as Rafael’s eyes fluttered open. Waking up by the sunlight was so much less jarring than waking up to an alarm clock. He stretched from top to bottom as he rolled over to kiss Anna awake—but when he turned, he found that she was already gone. He threw on a white t-shirt and his pajama pants before stumbling to the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, the scent of coffee had filled the room.

He went to the kitchen, filling a mug— _thank God, someone thought to put milk in the fridge,_ he thought—and padded back into the bedroom. It was only then that he noticed the balcony door was open. He let his eyes adjust to the light before pushing the screen door open. Anna was sitting in one of the cushioned wicker chairs, her bare feet up on the railing, coffee in one hand and her iPad on her lap. She was wearing his button-down from the previous night and a pair of denim shorts, her blonde hair tied into a loose braid that draped over her shoulder.

At the sound of the door, she looked up and grinned at him. “I see you went for the coffee before you went for me. Why am I not surprised?”

He returned her smile and kissed her on the head. “Good morning to you too.” He took a seat in the other chair. “How did you sleep?”

“Like a baby. It helped that my boyfriend sang me a lullaby,” she said, winking at him.

“Your boyfriend sounds like he loves you very much.”

She reached for his hand across the table between them. “ _Nunca lo he dudado_.” She had been trying to pick up small Spanish phrases here and there and was always excited when she got to use one.

He smiled and took a sip from the mug. Vacation coffee tasted so much better than I’m-drinking-this-so-I-don’t-murder-Carisi-today coffee. “So what’s got you up so early?”

“Trying to figure out what we should do for the day.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have a list already,” he said. Anna made lists for everything: groceries, vacation ideas, restaurants she wanted to try, even a running list of addresses for holiday cards.

“Well, I mean, I used to live out here. I don’t need a list to know what _I’d_ like to do.” She set her iPad aside. “But you’re the one who hasn’t been here. What do _you_ want to do?”

He smiled at her thoughtfulness. “I want to do…whatever you want to do.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh my God, the _one time_ I want you to be bossy!”

“I’m really not picky,” he said, “and I am _never_ bossy!”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, dear.”

He sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll start with stuff I _don’t_ want to do. I don’t go for touristy stuff. I think it comes from living in a—”

“Tourist town?” she finished, with a raised eyebrow. “Did you forget I grew up here? This is _the_ tourist town.”

“That’s true,” he laughed, and then thought for a second. “I think what I’d like to do most is to see where you became _you_.”

She knitted her brows. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want to know what made you who you are. This is where you grew up. Show me places that have meaning for _you_. Where you went to school, what you liked to do on weekends, places your parents took you as a kid. Anything like that.”

She stared at him, mouth agape. “You’re serious?”

“I am,” he replied. “I took a writing class in college—you know, in ancient times—and the only thing I really remember from it is the professor saying to show, not tell. I’m asking you to show me the things I don’t know about you, rather than tell me.”

She shook her head in disbelief. “Every time I think I can’t love you more…” She drank the last of her coffee and stood up to stretch. “All right, you asked for the Autobiography of Anna Stein? I warn you, it might take a few days.”

She went to walk past him to go back into the house, but he pulled her down by her arm into his lap. “I would hope so.” He kissed the side of her neck. “I much prefer to”—he moved across her jawline to her mouth, one of his hands running up her thigh—“ _thumb_ through the pages of my books rather than _devour_ them all at once.”

Heat instantly surged between her legs and she tried, unsuccessfully, to suppress a groan. “How is it possible for you to take one simple phrase and turn it into the dirtiest metaphor?”

His nose brushed hers as he taunted her with his lips, ghosting them over hers. “I’ve been told I have a sharp mind and a silver tongue.”

She could feel his arousal against her thigh and shifted in his lap to straddle him. He gasped at the contact, even though their respective layers of clothing. She pushed up on her knees, pressing them into the cushion, so that her head was over his. “Well, maybe,” she murmured, rolling her hips slowly against him, “we can co-author a best seller.”

His hand slid between her thighs and even through her shorts he could feel how wet she was. She arched her back and he took the opportunity to press a kiss to her clavicle, barely exposed from underneath his button-down. “You remember what happened the last time you wore one of my shirts?” he growled into her ear.

She suddenly lifted herself off of him and smirked. “I do.”

“Wha—oh, come on!” His cock twitched with the sudden loss of friction. She deliberately swung her hips as she strolled to the door, knowing it would deepen his desire. He licked his lips as he watched her ass move back and forth. “That’s just rude!”

She opened the screen door, but just before she went inside, she turned back to him and winked. “Bet you wish you’d have come for me before the coffee,” she said. “Because then _I_ would have comefor _you_.” She was gone before he could formulate any kind of response, leaving him the best kind of frustrated.

* * *

“So, where to first?” Rafael asked as he and Anna climbed into the rental car. They had just finished breakfast—French toast made out of the leftover Challah, which Anna had never made for him before and which he would gladly eat every day—but she was being very secretive about her plans for the day. The only thing she insisted on was that he wear shorts, which he didn’t argue with, since it was going to be in the mid-eighties.

She pulled her sunglasses out from her over-sized hobo bag and also handed him his. “I told you before, I’m not telling you a damn thing until we get to where we’re going.”

They drove back the way they’d come in the previous evening, heading south until they reached the Pacific Coast Highway. It was a beautiful day with a clear blue sky, perfect for driving up the coastline. She opened the windows to let fresh air in, and pieces of her hair loosened from its braid to fly around her face. It didn’t seem to bother her, though. They passed the Getty Villa, which Anna explained was an extension of the Getty Museum and a replica of the Villa dei Papiri, a Roman residence that had been buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. She also pointed out several parks on the opposite side of the highway, where she and her family liked to hike when her parents could both get time off work. Eventually, she pulled into a lot and parked the car. “Before we get out, change into these,” she said, pulling a pair of his sandals from her bag.

“Who are you, Mary Poppins?” he teased.

“You’re very funny today,” she replied, sticking her tongue out at him. She changed from her sneakers to a pair of cheap flip flops, and after he’d changed his shoes, they walked hand-in-hand across the road toward the coast.

“Well, since we’ve now gotten to where we’re going, can you tell me where exactly that is? And don’t say a beach.”

She glanced at him and grinned as they approached a stairway leading down to the water. “Well, I wouldn’t be wrong. But this isn’t just _a_ beach. This is the _best_ beach.”

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped so that he could look around. There were hundreds of people dotting the sand, sunbathing or making sandcastles with their kids. Dozens of surfers chased waves, riding them out further than Rafael would ever have dared to swim. Down the shore there was a long pier that stretched from the street out into the ocean, from which fishermen cast lines into the water, hoping for a bite.

He turned to look at Anna and saw that she was already looking up at him, studying his face for a reaction. “This is gorgeous. I can see why you love it here so much.”

Although she smiled at him, he thought he caught the slightest hint of sadness in her eyes. But she squeezed his hand and led him toward the ocean. “Want to be totally cliché and walk in the water a bit?”

He grinned. “Why come to the beach if you’re not going to get a little wet?”

They walked together through the sand at the end of the beach, letting the tide wash over their feet. “With all the hours you work, when’s the last time you even _saw_ a beach?” she asked.

He thought for a minute. “Back in 2010. Last time I went to Cuba.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Damn!”

“Well, like you said, it’s not like I’ve had a lot of time off,” he replied. “They have beautiful beaches there. It’s too bad that more people don’t go. Even outside of the beaches, I mean, the people and the culture and the _food_ …” He looked a bit wistful.

“Maybe we can go together someday,” she offered. “If you’d want to do that with me, that is.”

“I’d go anywhere with you.” She suddenly stopped walking and her hand slipped from his. He turned around and cocked his head. “What’s wrong?”

She was looking at him the way he’d looked at her the night before. “Do you realize what you just said?”

“I—no?” She came toward him and wrapped her arms around him tightly, laying her head on his chest. He snaked an arm around her waist and put his other hand on her upper back. “What’s gotten into you?”

She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him, so softly that the only way he knew it happened was the distinct shiver that went through his body. “What you just said—that you’d go anywhere with me—that was what you said to me right before you said you loved me for the first time.”

The lines in his face softened with his smile. He took one of her hands and kissed it. “And it’s still true.”

They stood that way for a few moments, just holding onto each other, hands joined at their sides, and then she led him away from the water so that they could sit on the sand together. She sat between his bent knees, leaning back on his chest and resting her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed a kiss to her neck.

“Don’t start,” she said, moving away from his mouth. “You know what that does to me.”

“Call it payback for earlier. I could be much worse.”

“But then what would I have to look forward to later?” 

He snorted and kissed her on the top of her head, letting her settle back against him again. The sun was rising higher into the sky, heating the sand underneath them as she stared out at the surfers. Once in a while one of them would lose his balance and fall into the ocean. She always held her breath when that happened, worried that he would get dragged out to sea. Inevitably, though, the surfer would pop back up like a cork, and she could breathe again.

Rafael suddenly broke her train of thought. “So, why this beach?”

She glanced down, although he couldn’t see it, and ran her fingers through the sand beneath her. “This is the beach we used to come to as a family. My parents tried to take their vacation time together, like I told you, and we would spend a lot of the time here. When we were little, Jakey would watch the surfers and he would always say he was going to do that someday.”

His heart beat a little faster when she mentioned her brother’s name, eager to learn more about him without actually having to ask. “And did he?”

“He did, and he was really good. He loved it out here. He even tried to teach me.” She smiled at the memory. “It didn’t go well.”

Rafael laughed. “Fall off a lot, did you?”

“I still maintain that the waves attacked me,” she replied. “Jakey used to laugh at me, but he never gave up. He wanted me to be able to ride with him, I think.”

Her voice sounded slightly shaky, as though she had dived into the memory headlong and was caught in its undertow. It made Rafael hesitate to ask the next question, but curiosity got the better of him. “Anna, you don’t have to answer this, but…when we were at your house, I noticed that there weren’t many pictures of him. Is there a reason for that, do you know?”

She shook her head. “I wish there were more. But my parents, they just aren’t—I mean, I think it’s hard because he was their firstborn, and as much as it hurt me, it hurt them ten times worse. I think it’s hard for them to see him and to be reminded of what they lost.”

They sat in silence for a bit, just watching the water crash onto the shore and recede again. The sound was hypnotic, despite all the people around them. At some point, Anna leaned forward to take her hair out of its braid. Before she could finger-comb it, however, Rafael’s long fingers were separating the strands and massaging her scalp. She smiled at his tenderness; if only the squad could see him right now, they probably wouldn’t recognize him.

Meanwhile, Rafael was entranced by just how many different shades of gold could exist in one person’s hair. He loved watching the light play off of it, almost giving it a shimmer. She lay back, and for a minute, he swore she fell asleep against him.

Eventually, she shifted out of his arms. She turned and knelt in front of him, giving him a quick kiss. “I love you, Raf. You’re a really good boyfriend.”

“I think I’m a little old to be referred to as your boyfriend,” he said, squeezing her side.

She squealed and jerked in surprise. “Well, then, as Carrie Bradshaw said, you can be my manfriend.”

“Carrie Bradshaw?”

“Oy,” she replied, “how can you live in New York and have never heard of Carrie Bradshaw? We’re gonna have to fix that when we get back…”

She stood up and began to brush the sand off of her bare legs. From his position, Rafael could just barely make out the underside of her ass, which was peeking out from her cutoff denim shorts. _How does she always manage to be so sexy without even trying?_ he wondered. She helped him to his feet and after he’d brushed off what he could—damn the hair on his legs—they began to walk back to the car. She was unusually quiet, and he worried that he’d overstepped by asking about the photos.

“ _Mi amor_ ,” he said, after they’d gotten back into the car, “I didn’t mean to upset you back there.”

She knitted her brows. “Upset me? You didn’t upset me.”

He looked at his hands. “I just—you got quiet, and I thought—”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that. I was just…remembering, I guess.” She turned the car on and lowered the windows again, since the air conditioning would need time to cool down. But before she pulled out of the parking space, she leaned over and gave him a deeper kiss, her hand on his cheek this time. “Thank you.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “For what?”

“For giving me those memories back,” she replied with a relieved smile. “It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve thought of my brother as who he was rather than what he became.”

* * *

After their trip to the beach, they got lunch at In-n-Out Burger, which was, in Anna’s opinion, slightly overrated but still enjoyable. It was a staple of Southern California, and she felt he had to try it at least once while they were visiting. Then they walked across the street to Diddy Riese, an ice cream shop on UCLA’s campus that specialized in ice cream sandwiches with fresh-baked cookies. She had brought them there because she had graduated from UCLA with her bachelor’s degree. She had been in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology department, and had majored in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution. That said, she usually just told people she had a degree in biology to avoid having to explain exactly what her major entailed.

As they walked across campus eating their ice cream sandwiches—Anna got cookies-and-cream ice cream between two chocolate chip cookies, while Rafael got strawberry between oatmeal-raisin—she explained that she and her friends would often stop there after late nights in the library. She had fond memories of everyone getting a different combination of cookies and ice cream and passing them between each other.

“I’ve never actually asked how you got from biology to executive assistant in finance,” he said as they passed by the medical school.

“I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was growing up,” she replied. “It was a good option for pre-vet. One of the requirements was that you had to basically be a researcher for a quarter, develop a hypothesis, and present your findings at the end of the quarter. There were a lot of opportunities, like possibly getting published. It was actually a lot of fun, believe it or not. Very hands-on.”

“Okay, so how—”

“I worked as a research scientist for a couple months after I graduated,” she said. “But after Jakey…I didn’t just want to get out of the state, I wanted to go as far away as possible. So, New York it was. And there weren’t many positions available for someone with my background, and I needed to pay rent. So, that was what I did.”

They switched sandwiches. “Did your parents want you to stay?”

“Of course, but they also knew I had to do what was best for me. And what was best for me, at the time, was to move somewhere new.”

He nodded. “I considered staying in Boston after I graduated law school. Did I ever tell you that?” They took a left turn and came upon the botanical gardens. “You want to go in?”

“Sure. I haven’t been here since graduation.” They walked a little while through the gardens, finishing their ice cream, Anna pointing out different types of trees and flowers from time to time. “So,” she finally said, “you were saying about staying in Boston?”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I really loved it in Massachusetts, but after my dad died, I wanted to be closer to my mom.” When he said that, her eyebrows furrowed just slightly for a split second—quick enough that if he hadn’t been glancing down at her, he wouldn’t have seen it. “What’s up?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing, really—”

“I know there’s something on your mind. Your eyebrows twitch whenever there’s something you’re not saying.”

Anna walked to a spot behind three large conifer trees, across from which there was a stone wall that was wide and low enough to sit on. She hopped up onto it. He stood next to her, still holding her hand. “I don’t want to bring up bad memories,” she finally said.

“You won’t,” he reassured her. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t share with you.”

She sighed. “It’s just—Raf, you’ve never really told me the story with your dad. You’ve dropped hints here and there, and I don’t need to know all the gory details, but—it’s hard, knowing there’s this part of your history that—I mean, you know about the worst night of my life, and—”

She knew she wasn’t phrasing it very well, but he understood what she was trying to ask. He hopped up onto the wall to sit next to her. “I know I haven’t been very forthcoming about him, but it’s just not something my family ever really discussed. He did what he did, we all knew it, but no one wanted to verbally acknowledge it—my mother especially. She didn’t want to admit that he was hurting her—or me.”

That surprised her. In Anna’s estimation, Lucia Barba was not one to be meddled with. “I can’t imagine your mom tolerating that bullshit. She’s such a _force_.”

He shook his head. “She’s Catholic, and her particular flavor of Catholics don’t divorce. She never would have left him. They were together in high school. He was the only man she ever loved, even though he…” He shifted a bit. “Anyway, I don’t think he was that way back then. Sometimes I actually—” He swallowed hard, trying to speak the words he’d barely allowed himself to think. “Sometimes, I think the reason he became that person was because of me.”

Anna’s head jerked toward him, her eyes blazing blue. “What the—why would you think that?”

He shrugged. “It’s just that my mom never mentioned him hitting her before I came along. And I know she didn’t have any other options. In those days, abused women didn’t have the support they do now. So maybe she just didn’t want to talk about it. But sometimes I wonder…”

“Wonder what?”

He looked down at their joined hands and ran his thumb over hers. “I wonder, if I’d never been born, would she have had an easier life?”

Anna drew in a deep breath and put her free hand on the back of his neck, running it over the ends of his hair. “Raf, I want you to listen to me very carefully,” she said. “You didn’t make your dad abuse your mom, or you. He did what he did because he was what he was. And if he made you feel that way, it was to absolve himself of his guilt. He didn’t change once you were born. He just became outwardly what he was inwardly, if he wasn’t already acting that way toward your mom.”

“I know that in my head,” he said, voice shaking. “It’s just harder to know it in my heart.”

“Rafael.”

She tried to catch his eyes, but he kept his gaze toward the ground. “Oh, you’re using my full first name. Must be serious.”

“You know deflection won’t work on me,” she said, using a tone that he had scarcely heard before. It wasn’t harsh. But it was serious.

Anna told him once that she wanted to know what was in his heart because she had given him hers. But he had hidden this piece from her, for reasons unknown to him. Maybe he had just gotten so used to ignoring it that he didn’t know _how_ to talk about it. And she had never pressed him to do so. But the previous night had changed something. Now that she had asked, he realized that he _wanted_ her to know. He _wanted_ to share this with her, the pain that he had buried for so long.

And so, behind a curtain of trees, Rafael laid bare his soul. He told her about his first memory of Enrique Luis Barba—of being slapped for getting bullied on the playground when he was five. His father thought he should “man up” and fight back, and apparently thought that by hitting him, Rafael would “toughen up.” And then it was because he wasn’t a star baseball player like Enrique had been from an early age. And then it was for playing his stereo too loudly while his father was hung over.

And then it was for no reason at all.

Lucia still got the worst of it, until Rafael was old enough to jump between his parents, taking the beatings for her. Enrique didn’t seem to care who he was hitting, as long as he was able to take out his aggression on someone.

Throughout his story, Rafael was remarkably stoic. Anna was surprised; he had shown a great deal of emotion for many reasons in the past, but for this, the most personal thing he had ever told her, he had no tears. She supposed it might be because he spent so long compartmentalizing it that he’d disassociated from it. But she still held his hand, squeezing it every so often, wondering if he was feeling nothing, or if the pain was just buried deep down where neither of them could reach it.

“And then something happened one day,” he said. “I don’t know why it was that day or what happened to cause it, but that day, it was different. I was sixteen years old, possibly a little older. Mom was in the kitchen, making dinner, and I was sitting on the couch doing my homework. And he came home drunk, like he usually was on payday, and he was pissed at something. I can’t even tell you what, that’s how often it happened. But he started toward the kitchen and I knew he was going to go after my mom again. And something just…snapped.” Anna swallowed hard. She had a feeling she knew what was coming. “I didn’t just jump between them that time. I remember running out from the living room and grabbing him by the shoulder before he could get to her. I pushed him. He turned around, and between being drunk and the shock of me shoving him, I had just enough time to land a good punch.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Did he—”

“Turns out, getting bullied on the playground teaches you a lot about the best way to kick the shit out of someone,” he replied, a half-grin on his face. “He had no idea what, or who, hit him. He went down, hard. He didn’t black out, but he sure as hell took his time getting up.”

Anna was looking at him with concern, as though that memory was about to come to life before her eyes. “What was your mom doing this whole time?”

“She was just…standing there, with her hand over her mouth. I don’t think _she_ knew what hit him at first, either. I remember after a few minutes, I felt my hand start throbbing, but I also remember feeling—I don’t want to say exhilarated, but…” He looked up, as if he were trying to find the words.

“Like you weren’t a victim anymore?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. He never hit either of us again after that. And I remember thinking, if I’d known it would only take one punch, I’d have done it years before.”

“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been to live through.” She looped her arm through his and recaptured his hand. “How does it affect you now?”

His brows knitted together. “I try not to let it.”

“Raf,” she said, “you just told me that you wonder sometimes if your mother’s life would have been better if you’d never been born. Clearly, it still affects you.”

He sighed. “I guess the biggest thing is what I imagine most abused kids worry about when they grow up.” He looked into the trees, studying the pinecones. “I mean, it’s not like I ever thought I’d be in a position to have kids anyway, but I worry that I’d end up—”

“Stop right there.” She put a hand to his cheek and turned his face toward her. “There is absolutely no way that would happen.”

“Once again, things that are easy to know in my head, but not so much in my heart. How can anyone be sure that they won’t end up like their parents? And how do I know that whatever it was that made me snap that day won’t come back and—”

“You of all people should know that while it’s true that most abusers were abused as children, it’s also true that most abused children do not end up abusing others.” She was cupping his face in both of her hands by then. It hurt her beyond words to see him in this kind of pain. Her eyes were filling with tears, but she wanted to look into _his_ eyes when she said what she said next. “Rafael, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you would never do that to any child, much less your own. You were violent that day because you were defending your mother, not because you wanted to take out your anger on someone. So if you can’t believe yourself, then believe _me_. There are very few things in life that I’m sure of, but I’m as sure of this as I am of the fact that I’m in love with you.”

He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, and she took his hand again. They sat together in the quiet that way for a while, as they had on the beach earlier that day. The only sounds around them were the birds and the occasional passerby walking the trail on the other side of the trees. After a while, he pulled back. “I just realized I didn’t finish my story.”

“Oh, right. Okay, go on.”

He cleared his throat. “So, a couple years after that happened—after I hit him, I mean—I went off to college and then, right as I was graduating law school, he got sick. He ended up in a diabetic coma and he was—well—the doctors gave us the option to take him off life support.”

“And did you?”

He shook his head. “In the end, _Mami_ couldn’t do it, and neither could I. We just…let him die. I’m not even sure—I don’t know how much he was aware of, but I can’t imagine it was a painless death.” He hesitated, but then caught Anna’s gaze, and he somehow knew it was safe to say the last thing that was on his mind. “You want to know something?”

“Sure.”

He took a deep breath. “It was a relief when he was gone. Not because he was out of his misery, but because he was out of ours. He was gone, and we didn’t have to think about him ever again if we didn’t want to.” He looked at her with watery eyes. “I’ve never told anyone that before. I’ve thought it, a thousand times. But I’ve never been able to actually…” He trailed off, a few tears falling from his eyes and hitting his khaki shorts.

“Oh, Raf, I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing his arm. “This is what I didn’t want. I didn’t want you to have to—”

He turned to look at her and ran his hand through her hair, pushing it away from her eyes. “No, Anna, it’s not—it’s not sadness. It’s not that at all.”

Her eyes searched his face, his eyes, trying to piece together what he wasn’t saying. “Then what?”

He drew her toward him and kissed her softly on the mouth, and for a minute, he forgot that they were in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the country. He forgot about his troubles at work. He forgot about everything except how she tasted like strawberry ice cream and chocolate chips. She relaxed against him as their tongues traced each other. And slowly, the kiss deepened, becoming more passionate with every passing second. The way he kissed was the way he loved—slowly, almost hesitantly, until he finally understood that it was safe to want it _all_. And when that happened, he gave it everything he had. He had offered her his closely guarded, trembling heart, and she not only accepted it but opened it. It was as if finally speaking the unspeakable had freed him from the chains of grief and guilt.

“It wasn’t sadness,” he repeated as he pulled away. Then, he put her hand on his chest, directly over his heart. “It’s relief.”


	3. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael & Anna take a shower. Of sorts. Ahem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess what? Ya girl got in another MOOD. I wasn’t going to write smut tonight, but then I thought, “Well, you know, the country is going to hell, we’ve all had a rough week, so I’m gonna go ahead and write some smut to make my dear readers happy.” I hope I’ve accomplished said goal. This is absolutely NSFW, 100% fuckery, no real reason. It doesn’t add anything to the plot, it’s just here for your pleasure. 
> 
> Of course, a special thanks to my ladies on tumblr, @madpanda75, @thatesqcrush, and @misssirenlove, for EVERYTHING they do for me every day.
> 
> And again, thank you to all of you who read my nonsense. I never intended for Anna and Rafael to become a whole THING, but it’s because of you all that they have, and I couldn’t be happier.
> 
> Song: Insatiable by Darren Hayes (y’all might know him as the lead singer of Savage Garden)

Rafael and Anna arrived home that afternoon to find Miriam and Joseph gone. When they went back to the guest house, they found a note tacked to the door.

> _Dad and I went grocery shopping for dinner tonight. Will be back around 7:00. Dinner should be 8:30. Hope you two had a good day! Love, Mom._

Anna turned to him. “Well, seems like we have time for a nap and a shower,” she said. “What do you say?”

He put his hands on her waist. “Hmm,” he mused. “Well, those both sound like good ideas…but maybe not in that order?”

Her face lit up with mischief. Before he knew what was happening, she was dragging him by the hand inside the house, straight to the bedroom. She peeled her shirt off and pushed him down onto the edge of the bed. After removing her shoes, she climbed into his lap, straddling him the way she had on the balcony earlier that day. “Now, where were we?”

Rafael ran his hands up her back as he kissed her, lacing his fingers through her hair, until she tugged at the hem of his shirt, silently begging him to discard it. After he pulled it off, he took a second to take in her form, clad only in a hot pink push-up bra and denim shorts. She was slightly sticky from the afternoon heat, and her cheeks were flushed a light pink.

“ _Dios mio_ ,” he said with a deep exhale. “Could you possibly be any sexier?” She smiled and her blush deepened. She climbed off of him, turned around, and unbuttoned her shorts. As they dropped from her hips, Rafael’s breath caught in his chest. She was wearing a hot pink thong that matched the bra 

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Something wrong?” She knew he was an ass man, and occasionally went out of her way to take advantage of that fact.

He stared at her and licked his lips. “I’m glad that I was unaware that you were wearing that, because otherwise we’d have never made it out of this bedroom this morning.”

She turned back around and gave him an eyeful for a minute before sliding the thong down her legs. She unhooked her bra and let that fall to the floor as well. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said, casually turning around and walking toward the bathroom. “You’re welcome to join.”

In less than a second, he was off the bed and walking her backwards into the bathroom, kissing her the entire way. They hadn’t showered together in months; he had been consumed with a few tough cases that had him at the office early in the morning and kept him there late at night. By the time he’d get home, Anna would either be knee-deep in studying or asleep. Or he would be so tired that he just wanted to wash the day off. She turned around to start the water, and felt him straining against his shorts, pressed into her ass. He moved her hair to kiss the spot where her neck and shoulder met, knowing how wet it would make her. Sure enough, she shuddered in his hands, biting her lip to suppress a moan.

“Why hold it back?” he whispered into her ear. “Let me hear how much you want me.”

“God, all the time. Constantly.”

He smiled against her neck and lightly slapped her on the ass. “That’s better.” Despite the distraction, she managed to open the shower door and then stepped inside. He stripped off the rest of his clothes and joined her, pushing her against the back wall. He pinned her hands against the wall on either side of her body and looked her squarely in the eyes. “Stay,” he commanded.

And that was the moment she realized “Courtroom Dom” had come out. Although she didn’t know what to expect, she trusted him implicitly and knew that whatever it was would quite likely lead to an unbelievable orgasm—as if there had been anything _but_ unbelievable orgasms with him. He seemed committed to outdoing himself every time, much like his courtroom performances.

“Okay,” she breathed.

Steam was quickly building in the room. The discussion they’d had earlier that day had freed him from the bondage of his memories, and now, he felt exhilarated. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the space between her breasts, indulging every whim, knowing that at the same time, he was igniting her. His hands found their way to her hips and he pulled her toward him, his erection the only thing between them.

“You were very mean to me this morning,” he growled into her ear. “You left me very frustrated.”

She nodded, as his fingers moved across her hipbones. “I—I’m—sorry—” she finally managed to say.

“You will be,” he replied, capturing her mouth again. He shifted his hands underneath her breasts, pushing them upward and moving from her mouth to gently teeth at one of her nipples. It was becoming increasingly difficult not to move her hands from where he’d put them. She wanted to touch him, feel his hot skin underneath her fingers. 

Meanwhile, he was licking a path from her breasts down the center of her stomach, lowering himself to his knees and pausing at her hips to swirl his tongue over each of them. Over the course of their relationship, Rafael had come to memorize every erogenous zone on Anna’s body. Her hips seemed to be one of the most sensitive. Sure enough, she gasped above him; he glanced up to see her chest heaving as her lower half rocked forward off of the wall. He urged her legs further apart and pressed a kiss to the inside of one of her thighs.

“Rafael!” she cried desperately. She could _feel_ him smirk as he lifted that same leg over his shoulder.

He spread her open with his fingers, sinking one inside of her, eliciting the most delightful shudder from her body. “Now, what did I say about being sorry?” 

“Fuck,” she gasped. “Not fair—need you—”

He gave her center the quickest, lightest flick with his tongue, and could almost taste her need. “Lucky for you, I’m a forgiving man.” And then he pressed his mouth back to her, making her cry out for him.

She may not have been able to use her hands, but she made sure to enjoy the visual: a gorgeous, brilliant alpha male on his knees in front of her, water running down his strong back and over the perfect curve of his ass as he devoured her like a starved man. That alone was enough to make her come undone, but she tried to hold on as long as she could. She wanted this to last, even as she felt familiar waves through her thighs.

Rafael may have been the one on his knees, but he knew that her pleasure was his to control. He delved deeper inside her, pushing his tongue under the hood of her clitoris, slowly and softly stroking it back and forth. He relished the noise she made when he did that, and he made a mental note to do it again after a few minutes. This was as much a turn-on for him as it was for her. She had told him once that it was the general consensus of her girlfriends that their boyfriends only performed oral sex on them begrudgingly. He was aghast at that revelation. Nevermind the fact that it was ridiculous for men to expect oral sex without wanting to perform it; he simply did not understand how any straight man could find licking a woman to orgasm anything other than incredibly hot and fulfilling.

He had also been with two women who didn’t _want_ him to do it, and the only explanation he could think of was that they had been with men who either didn’t know what they were doing or, worse, who had told them that it wasn’t enjoyable. He, of course, never pushed them into doing anything they didn’t want to do, but he always felt a pang of disappointment when he couldn’t do the thing he loved most. To Rafael, there was almost nothing sexier and more arousing than tasting a woman’s climax, feeling her thighs clench around his face, hearing her scream his name. In fact, performing oral sex made his own orgasm infinitely more intense, because ninety-five percent of the time, he would have the image of his partner writhing under his tongue in his head.

And with Anna, he had found the perfect sexual counterpart—she _never_ turned down oral sex when they were being intimate, and she wasn’t afraid to be vocal about exactly what she wanted. She would tell him if she wanted him to move to the left or right, or if she liked something he was doing, or if she wanted something different. It was twice as fulfilling with her, not just because of how much he loved her but because she was so comfortable with him that she allowed herself to direct him.

Her hands were still pressed to the back wall and it was becoming unbearably hard to keep them there, especially when she looked down and locked eyes with him. She could just barely make out his mouth moving against her, which made her even wetter.

“Please,” she gasped, “please, let me touch—” The sound of her begging only made him hum against her clit, a delicious vibrating sensation coupled with a lascivious sound. She couldn’t tell whether he was acquiescing to her request or if he was just torturing her. At that point, she didn’t care; she just wanted to put her hands in his hair. “Please, Rafael—”

He pulled away just long enough to smirk at her. “ _Como desées_.”

Although she didn’t know exactly what he said, she knew it meant she could touch him, and she didn’t hesitate. She laced her fingers through his hair, pulling him forward, grinding against his mouth. He spread her open again, giving him full access to every sensitive part inside of her, and with just one barely-there flick of his tongue, she was shaking, right on the edge of the cliff.

“Oh, baby, right there,” she whined. “More, more of that, right _there,_ I’m so close—”

He gave her one more long, slow lick from back to front, sinking two fingers inside of her at the same time, and then repeated his earlier movement under the hood of her clit. That was her undoing. Her orgasm crashed over harder than she’d expected, and she almost lost her balance—Rafael quickly caught her by the thighs, somehow not losing the rhythm he’d set with his mouth against her. She came so hard that she cried, thankful that the shower hid the tears.

It took a full two minutes for her to stop shaking enough that he could release his grasp on her legs. He pressed his forehead to her abdomen, her hand stroking his hair, as he regained his own sense of balance. The second he was level with her again, she kissed him, needing to taste herself on his lips. That was another thing that she never thought she would find hot, until she suddenly did, with him. Only him. 

He noticed she was still trembling. “You okay?” 

“I love you,” she replied. “You’re so good to me.”

He shook his head. “You really don’t know how much I love doing that.”

She looked down. “Oh,” she said, taking his erection in her hand and stroking him lightly, “I think I have some idea.”

Her orgasm had made him harder than he was when they’d gotten into the shower, and he didn’t think that was even possible. So, feeling her hand grazing his cock was almost painful, but in the best way possible. Still, he wanted to make sure that she didn’t feel like she had to return the favor.

“You know you don’t have to—”

She put a finger to his lips. “ _You_ don’t know how much I love doing _this.”_ She dropped to her knees and looked up at him, and he swore her eyes were bigger and bluer than usual. “And you can touch me _all you want_ ,” she added.

Anna had realized, when they first started sleeping together, that as confident as Rafael was, he seemed shy about letting her see him naked. It soon became apparent that the women he had dated before her hadn’t given him much praise when it came to his body. She knew part of his problem, at least in her case, was the age difference; it had taken her almost a year to make him understand that she hardly ever thought about it. But there was still a small part of him, she knew, that believed he wasn’t physically attractive enough for her. She understood the feeling of inadequacy. She worried for a long time that because of her assault, she wouldn’t be able to be the sexual partner he deserved. But he had coaxed her out of that feeling, and she wanted to do the same for him. It wasn’t just that she kissed him and touched him everywhere, although she knew he loved that, too. But every time they were together this way, no matter the circumstances, she made sure to _tell_ him exactly how much she wanted him.

“You are so unbelievably hot,” she purred against his thigh, lightly dragging her nails across his skin. “Just _looking_ at you makes me wet.”

She heard him moan. “Oh, God…”

She gave him a long, slow lick up his cock, flicking her tongue against the frenulum, which she knew perfectly well was one of his most sensitive spots. He shuddered and put a hand on the back of her head. “I don’t know how I got so lucky,” she said.

Despite her assertion that he didn’t know how much she liked doing this, he _did_ know. That was another reason they were perfect together sexually. It was almost as though they fed off of each other’s energy, wanting to take and give at the same time. It was intoxicating, addictive, sinful.

One of her hands ghosted over his balls, eliciting a sharp intake of breath above her. She grinned, enjoying every second of this. And the next thing Rafael knew, her lips were sliding over him while she continued to stroke him slowly. He shivered at the warmth of her mouth, and involuntarily jerked his hips when she hollowed her cheeks and started to suck him. She reached up to put her hand on top of his, still on the back of her head, pushing lightly. It was an invitation, he knew, one that nearly sent him flying over the edge. 

He took her cue and wrapped his fingers through her hair, pushing her forward to take him even deeper into her mouth. “Jesus, Anna!” he cried. 

He leaned his head back against the wall, his other hand to his forehead, reciting the rules of evidence to himself to avoid finishing too soon. He knew wouldn’t be able to last much longer, though—he was too deep, and her mouth was too warm and tight. He was dangerously close to passing out from sheer pleasure, not to mention the heat from the shower. 

She pulled away for a moment, needing to catch her breath, but kept working him with one hand. “Your cock feels so good. I could have another orgasm just from sucking you.” 

And then she engulfed him again, groaning around him wickedly, vibrating against him the way he had against her. His thighs started to tense, and she knew he was close. He was fucking her mouth wildly by then, cursing in Spanish and English, on the edge of pleasure and pain. 

“Oh, _fuck,_ that feels—incredible—don’t—don’t stop—” Then, she moved her other hand around to his backside, giving his ass a firm squeeze, and he was absolutely, overwhelmingly lost to her. “Oh, shit, Anna, please don’t stop, oh God oh God oh _God,_ I’m coming, yes, oh, _fuck yes_!” 

She had just enough time to prepare herself, and then she felt the familiar sensation of liquid in her mouth, hot and slightly bitter. Anna hardly noticed how he tasted, though, because she was so consumed by hearing, feeling, _enjoying_ his release. She pumped him through it, taking him through the aftershocks just as well as she had through the orgasm. When she felt his thighs relax, she pulled away from him, wiping her mouth. He was still panting when she got to her feet, so she laid a hand on his heart, soothing him until he was breathing normally again. He shook his head in disbelief.

“What?” she asked, feigning ignorance.

He leaned his forehead against hers, a hand on the back of her head, gently this time. “I swear to God, you’re like caffeine to me. Even if I _wanted_ to quit you, I couldn’t.”

“So you’re saying I’m a stimulant?”

He laughed. “You do make my heart race.”

“Oh my God, you’re so damn corny.” She loved that they were able to laugh together as friends as easily as they were able to fuck like lovers. “We should probably, you know, _actually_ shower now.”

“Agreed,” he said. Then, he gently turned her around so that her back was to him and grabbed her shampoo from the shower caddy behind him. Before she could ask what he was doing, she felt his hands in her hair again. The same fingers that had made her come undone just minutes earlier now worked through her hair, as lovingly and gently as he could. And this was how Anna could trust him with their lovemaking; he could be dominant and rough, but she knew underneath that was her sweet Rafael, the one who returned wonderful memories of her brother to her and who could make her melt with a lopsided, goofy grin. It was sometimes hard for her to reconcile the dominant sexual figure he could be with the sweet, soulful man he was, but he was hers, and she was his, and that was what mattered in the end.

She tilted her head back under the water. The shampoo started to rinse from her hair, the scent of peaches and cream leftover. She was going to return the favor, but suddenly realized that he hadn’t brought his shampoo in with him.

“Uh, Raf, I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but you’re gonna have to smell like me for the rest of the day.”

He grinned and nuzzled against her. “Lucky me.”

She returned his smile and kissed him on the cheek. “Correction: lucky _us_.”


	4. Finally Got It Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While they're still on vacation in Los Angeles, Anna wants Rafael to meet her best friends, and they want to meet him. This chapter has everything: drinks, exes, sex in a bathroom, a drink thrown in someone's face, and, finally, some emotional fluff to cap everything off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know I said this chapter wouldn’t happen til after the bar exam, but I took a Saturday night off and finished it up. Sue me. Or, you know, don’t, because I don’t have my law license yet. Tonight, we meet Anna’s friends and have some fun in a bar. And by fun, I mean drinks and exes and sex. The end of the chapter gives you a nice bit of emotional fluff as well, and in this chapter, you will all get to know my headcanon about what really happened with Yelina.
> 
> Also, the restaurant and bar are real places that I used to frequent when I lived in Los Angeles, and I highly recommend both of them!
> 
> Song: The Geeks Get the Girls by American Hi-Fi. This is a song that my friends and I used to listen to while driving up the 101 on our way to one of these nights out, and given the subject matter of this chapter, I thought it was appropriate.

“Are you _absolutely sure_ you want to do this?”

Anna was standing in front of the full-length mirror in the bathroom, putting the finishing touches on her makeup. Rafael, on the other hand, was already dressed and ready to go, but while he waited, he laid down on the bed to read. It was weird for him to be ready before her; she was never big on makeup and usually just wore her hair in a braid or undone completely. To say she was a natural beauty was an understatement.

“I’m sure,” he said. “I told you I wanted to see your past, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, I know.” She poked her head out from the bathroom, still in her robe but otherwise put together. “But we’re going to be out really late, and it’s going to be loud and crowded, _and_ you’re meeting two of my friends.”

He didn’t even look up. “I _want_ to meet your friends.” he replied. “And do you forget that I’m routinely up working at two in the morning? It’s not like this will be any different than half my weeknights.”

She didn’t reply, and he figured he had argued her into a corner as she retreated back into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. While she knew he had agreed to going out that night, she was still skeptical about whether he’d actually enjoy himself. They had spent the morning and early afternoon doing some touristy things; Anna insisted that, while they weren’t necessarily important to her personally, she would never forgive herself if she didn’t at least take Rafael to the Observatory and through Griffith Park. They spent the majority of their day there—at the Los Angeles Zoo and walking through the expanse of the park. They’d even stopped at a playground that had recently been renovated, where Rafael pushed her on the swings. She had laughed like a child as she got higher, and she couldn’t help but notice the smile on his face when she leaped off of the swing midair, taking a bow when she landed. In some ways, she was actually glad for his suspension, because it forced him to actually take a vacation rather than work through one.

When she and Rafael decided to visit, she immediately texted her two oldest friends who still lived in town, Michelle and Kim, to let them know. They were thrilled, and suggested doing “Throwback Thursday,” dressing up as they had when they were twenty-one and going to the bar where they spent many Friday and Saturday nights during college. It wasn’t a club atmosphere, thank God, but it was still sure to be crowded and likely full of dudebros.

She originally suggested a girls’ night, but they’d heard from Miriam that she was bringing this mysterious boyfriend of hers, and they wanted to meet him. Anna mentioned it to Rafael and said they could just all have dinner somewhere, but he had insisted that they do whatever would be the most fun for her. She had to admit, she was excited to dress up and go to the bar with her friends—and to have them meet the man she loved—but at the same time, she didn’t want him to feel awkward or out of place, since the bar was mostly full of college students. Then, she chided herself; she never let their age difference bother her, and she didn’t want to start now.

The clothes she’d selected sat on the edge of the bathtub, waiting for her to put them on. It was the “uniform” she wore essentially every weekend when she and her friends would go out. But that was then. She was nearing thirty years old now. Wasn’t she supposed to be more dignified than these clothes would suggest? Add to that, she had started to feel more self-conscious about her body in the last year. She noticed lines around her eyes and her stomach wasn’t as flat as it once was. It wasn’t as though she thought she was a troll, but she had definitely hit a quarter-life crisis. Sighing, she hung up her robe and slowly began to dress. On went the stockings, the bra, the skirt, the t-shirt, the blazer, the shoes. She wasn’t expecting to feel entirely comfortable in these clothes that had once been like a second skin, an armor. But when she went to the mirror to examine herself, a slow smile appeared on her lips.

As it turned out, it wasn’t so hard to reconcile the girl she’d been with the woman she was.

“I’m ready,” she called from behind the door. Rafael swung his legs over the bed and tossed the book onto the nightstand. “You prepared?”

“Um, yeah, sure.” _That’s odd phrasing,_ he thought, a little confused. At least, he was confused until she opened the door; one look at her and he understood _exactly_ why she had asked him that question. He took her in from head to toe: her hair was loose and voluminous, mountains of waves framing her face, which had been painted with black, winged eyeliner and a fire-red lipstick that he had never seen her wear, but which suited her perfectly.

As for her clothing, from the waist up, she was almost demure; she’d picked a grey V-neck t-shirt and topped it with a black blazer. But what was beneath that was enough to make him breathless. Somewhere along the line, Anna had picked up a denim miniskirt (or had owned it and managed to hide it from him all these months) and layered that over a pair of fishnet thigh-highs, capped off with black stiletto pumps.

To Rafael, Anna was always beautiful. She was beautiful in the morning before she opened her eyes, at night when her hair was damp and her skin pink from her shower, and every minute in between. He was _always_ attracted to her. He _always_ wanted her. It was just a natural state of being for him by that point. But the Anna that stepped out from behind that door wasn’t beautiful. She was downright _hot._ Like, not even “pretty girl on the street” hot. She was straight out of one of his college-era fantasies, the girl at the bar who he would have given anything to take home and fuck all night but who he was always too shy to talk to. She looked like the personification of sex.

She couldn’t quite place the look on his face, and looked down, blushing. “I know, it’s kind of…a lot. Is it—do I look—”

He felt like all the blood in his body had unceremoniously rushed to his groin. “You know, you really ought to wait ‘til I put you on my life insurance to wear things like this.”

Her head jerked up. “So you don’t think I’m too old to get away with”—she gestured to her clothing—“this?”

His eyes widened in shock. “Are you _kidding_? You look”—he was searching for the right word—“fuckable.”

She blushed again and looked at him through her lashes. “Well, _that’s_ something you’ve never called me.”

He crossed the room and didn’t hesitate to pull her into him, making sure to press his erection against her. “I know we can’t do it right now”—he looked squarely into her eyes—“but I swear to God, I don’t care how late it is, when we get back I’m going to show you exactly _how_ fuckable you look.”

She playfully swatted at him, squirming out of his grasp. “Good God, do you _ever_ stop wanting to bang me?”

He grinned. “Nope.”

“Good. At least I know what I’m wearing still has the intended effect on men.”

He sat down to put on his shoes and raised an eyebrow at her. “Doing a research project, are you?”

She packed her ID, credit card, phone, lipstick, and keys into a black wristlet. “Well, I _am_ a biologist, after all. But no.” She leaned against the wall, legs crossed, arms folded. “When I said ‘men,’ I meant ‘the incredibly hot, Cuban attorney I love, who is planning to ravage me later.’”

He stood up and grabbed his wallet along with the cherry Chapstick he’d become addicted to thanks to kissing it off of her so often. “Careful, or I might have to ravage you _now._ ”

She walked swiftly past him, giving him a mischievous glance on her way. “And risk disappointing my friends? _¡Nunca!_ ”

Ordinarily he would have made a smartass remark in response, but he was too distracted by the swing of her hips and the length of her legs to think of one.

* * *

They needed to get dinner before heading to the bar to meet her friends, so Anna suggested a diner near Beverly and Fairfax. It was slightly out of the way, but they had all night, and it was only eight o’clock. They opted to take a Lyft instead of drive, just in case one or both of them ended up having too many drinks. Besides, Anna had pointed out, parking anywhere in Los Angeles on a Thursday night would be a nightmare.

The evening was characteristically temperate, with clear skies (or, at least, as clear as they got in Los Angeles) and a warm breeze. As they drove, Anna told Rafael more about Michelle and Kim. They met in freshman English after being assigned to work with each other on a group project. All three of them were different majors—Anna in biology, Michelle in theatre, and Kim in political science—but they bonded over their mutual hatred of the Los Angeles Angels and love of musical theatre and had stayed in close contact ever since. Michelle had even come to New York after Anna’s assault, but by the trial, she’d gone back to California. The last time Anna had seen Kim was at Jakey’s funeral. While Michelle was still single, Kim had gotten married and had a daughter not long ago. Anna hadn’t been able to attend the wedding because it was right in the middle of the trial. Her lawyer husband was going to join them, so at least Rafael would have someone to talk to while Anna, Michelle, and Kim inevitably ended up reminiscing.

“So tell me more about where we’re eating,” he said. “What about it makes it meaningful to you?”

She smiled wistfully and looked out the window as she spoke. “When we were in college, we used to go to this diner all the time, before we’d go out to the bar, and sometimes afterward if we needed drunk food. It’s open almost twenty-four hours, so it was always an option.”

“Almost twenty-four hours?”

“Well, they close for two hours—from four in the morning until six—so they can clean. But otherwise, they’re open, and they serve breakfast all night.”

He took her hand on the seat. “The important question is, do they serve _pancakes_ all night?”

“They do!” she laughed. “But actually, my favorite pre-bar food is French fries with ranch dressing and the stuffed grilled cheese. They make their own ranch in-house.”

“You and your ranch dressing. If it _can_ have ranch, it _will_ have ranch.”

“Hey, don’t judge me, Mr. I’ll-Put-Hot-Sauce-On-Anything. I swear, eventually I’ll catch you learning to make sriracha-based desserts.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Why is that?”

“Because that would require me to learn how to bake,” he replied. “Huevos rancheros I can do. I’ll leave the desserts to Carisi.”

Before long, they were getting out of the car outside of Swingers Diner. Patrons were seated outside on the patio, but the inside of the restaurant was clearly where the action was. It was definitely appropriate for a “Throwback Thursday” evening; it had a distinct 1970s vibe about it. There was ample seating at a long, wraparound counter and plastic, plaid booths, as well as a jukebox just inside the door. A sign next to the hostess stand said to grab a menu and seat yourself, so Anna did just that, leading them to the counter.

“The counter is the best place to sit,” she explained. “You never know who you’ll run into.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

A food runner came by and filled two water glasses for them, and then dashed away just as quickly. Clearly, the place was a well-oiled machine. “I once shared French fries with the lead singer of one of my favorite local bands at the counter,” she said. “And Kim was reading a book and drinking a milkshake when Ed Norton sat down next to her. She said she nearly spilled the shake on herself.”

He laughed. “Well, you know I have no problem with bar seating.”

In the end, Anna got her usual, and Rafael ended up ordering the pancakes. Per usual, they ended up taking from each other’s plates as they talked about plans for the remainder of the week. While they shared a house-made red velvet cupcake for dessert, Rafael asked Anna about some of her fondest memories of the diner. She gave him a sideways glance.

“Oh, well…I don’t think you really want to know details,” she said, hesitation in her voice. “My misspent youth is—”

“Part of who you are,” he finished. “What’s wrong?”

She shifted in her chair as she licked frosting off her fork. “It’s just—I mean—there are a lot of memories that have to do with, um—”

He spun toward her in the chair and put a hand on her thigh, sending a reflexive shiver up her spine. “Anna, I’m not under some delusion that you didn’t date before me, you know. Come to think of it, you’ve never really talked much about your past relationships, other than what you told me for the trial.”

She shrugged. “It’s not like I had a lot of serious relationships before you, Raf. I mean, I dated people, but like I told you then, the longest boyfriend I had was a year, and that was before I moved to New York.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I still don’t understand how that’s possible. You’re beautiful and smart, and an above-average singer. How were there not men lining up to date you?”

“Oh,” she said, blushing, “it’s not that I didn’t get offers, and it’s not like I didn’t have—I mean, flings, I guess. It’s just that I was more interested in school and my friends. I liked going out, and I didn’t want to be tied to a relationship in college. Hence, misspent youth.”

“I’m not asking you to give me details of your sex life,” he said. “But you don’t have to hide who you are, or who you were, or what you did, from me.”

Her lips twitched into a slight smile. “If you’re sure you want to know; I had a short—I guess you could call it a flirtation, with a guy who used to work here. He was the door guy and was in a band. His name was Luke.”

He smirked. “Ah, yes. Musicians. Every young woman’s kryptonite.”

She smacked him on the arm. “Hey, I didn’t go for _all_ musicians. Besides, he was a drummer. Hardly a musician.”

“I think Ringo Starr would disagree,” he laughed.

“I think Ringo Starr thinks he’s more talented than he is,” she shot back. “Anyway, it didn’t turn into anything super serious. It was just a thing that happened, and that was more dramatic than it should have been. Stuff you think is serious in your twenties that really isn’t.”

He took another forkful of cupcake. “How’d it end?”

It was her turn to smirk. “I may or may not have tossed a glass of water in his face when he showed up with a girlfriend who I knew nothing about for the entire time we were having whatever it was we were having.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Is it weird that I am both shocked _and_ unsurprised by you doing that?”

She pushed the last bite of cupcake toward him. “I’ll go ahead and take that as a compliment. I can’t see myself doing it _now_ , but at the time, it was a statement-with-a-capital-S.”

“What happened to him, do you know?”

She shrugged. “I left Los Angeles not too long after that. I never saw him again. Probably still trying to be a musician, like half the guys in this city. Clearly, his lucrative career as a door guy didn’t work out, since he always worked Thursday nights.”

Rafael almost choked on his water laughing. “Thank you for that,” he said. “You sure you wouldn’t rather be dating some hot, young drummer?”

He was mostly kidding, but Anna picked up on a note of insecurity in his voice. She put her hand on the back of his neck and played with his hair, a subtle flirtation. Leaning into his shoulder, she whispered, “Hot, young drummers are what you distract yourself with while you wait for a handsome, distinguished attorney to fall in love with.”

Every time the voice in his head started to whisper that he wasn’t good enough, somehow, she would find the words to shut it up. It was comforting to know that she would tell him what he needed to hear without question, but he wished he could find the words to tell her why he so often needed reminded.

* * *

It took a little more than half an hour to get from the diner to Bigfoot Lodge, and Anna had been texting Kim and Michelle most of the way. Kim and her husband, Sean, were already there, and had snagged a booth for everyone. Michelle was on her way, but she lived all the way in Woodland Hills, so her travel time would be even longer than Rafael and Anna’s. By the time the Lyft pulled up to the curb outside the bar, Anna was practically shaking from excitement.

After getting out of the car, she adjusted her skirt and jacket. “Last chance to back out.”

He took her hand in his and kissed her on the cheek. “Not a chance.”

The mountain-lodge themed bar was already crowded, and it was only ten o’clock. After taking a second for their eyes to adjust to the dim lighting, Rafael’s eye was immediately drawn to the huge, wooden bar that looked like it was an actual tree trunk on its side. Light fixtures shaped like antlers hung from the ceiling, and, of course, there were (he hoped) fake animal heads mounted to the walls. A giant California flag hung in the very back, near the restrooms, and the right wall was lined with red, leather booths around tables resembling tree stumps. It was from one of these booths that a tall, red-haired woman rose to her feet, waving excitedly. Anna went running toward the booth, Rafael just a few steps behind her. The redhead came out from the booth and threw her arms around Anna’s neck.

“Oh my God, Kim!” Anna shrieked. “I missed you _so_ much!”

“Holy shit, you look _exactly_ like you did last time I saw you!” Kim replied, squeezing Anna tightly and grinning like a fool. “You absolute bitch.”

Anna laughed in a way that Rafael had never heard. It made him smile, seeing her so happy, even if he had nothing to do with it. “Don’t start with me. You’re the one who got married and had a kid, and you _still_ have the best body of any of us. And speaking of which,” she continued, “this must be Sean.”

A sharply dressed, sandy-haired man rose from his seat and gave Anna a winning smile. “Nice to finally meet you,” he said. “I’ve obviously heard about nothing other than you for the last week.”

“I’ve heard nothing but great things about you. And speaking of great things,” Anna said, grabbing Rafael’s hand, “this is Rafael Barba. Raf, I want you to meet—”

“Kim and Sean Barnes. Wonderful to meet you. Anna’s told me such good things about you,” he said to Kim, as he shook both of their hands.

“Likewise,” Kim said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you ever since Anna told us you were coming to visit.” She turned to Anna. “Have you heard from Michelle? Is she on her way?”

Anna nodded. “She said she was about ten minutes away last time I—”

“She’s been here for ten minutes _looking_ for you people!” shouted a loud voice behind them. Kim and Anna spun around and this time, both of them shrieked. Michelle, a voluptuous woman with olive skin and nearly black hair, rushed forward and nearly tripped on her heels in her excitement.

“I see nothing’s changed,” Anna laughed as the three of them embraced. “You look _amazing_!”

Michelle tossed her curls playfully “I’m like a fine wine. I just get better with age.” She glanced at the table, where Rafael and Sean were just standing, amused by the spectacle. “I know _you,_ ” she said to Sean. “But _you_! You’re—”

“Rafael Barba,” he replied. “Anna’s told me a lot about you. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

She extended her hand. “Michelle Caruso. Anna’s told me a lot about you, too, but I plan to do my own investigation.”

He laughed. “I’m used to being around detectives.”

“Should we get drinks before we all sit down?” Anna asked.

Michelle and Kim nodded their agreement. “Are we starting with shots, per usual?” Michelle asked.

“Oh, God,” Kim said, “you can’t be serious. You said a throwback night, not a throw _up_ night.”

“Whatever,” Michelle said. “Let’s go, girls.” With that, she grabbed Anna and Kim’s arms and dragged them away, leaving Rafael and Sean at the booth.

As they stood in the crowd looking for an opportunity to shove their way up to the bar, both Michelle and Kim turned to Anna. “Okay, girl. Spill it. How is he in bed?” Michelle asked.

“ _Michelle_!” Kim exclaimed, slapping her in the arm. Anna was cracking up, though—Michelle hadn’t changed one bit since college. She was always brash and direct, one of the reasons Anna liked her so much. In fact, in some ways, she reminded Anna of Rafael.

“Okay, okay, we’ll get to the girl talk when we’re all drunk and can blame it on the alcohol. But seriously, though, he’s _cute_. You said he’s Cuban?”

Anna nodded. “One hundred percent. Fluent Spanish speaker, which should, _ahem,_ tell you what you need to know about your previous question.” She turned to Kim. “But I want to know about you guys! Tell me everything from the last four years.”

“No, no, no,” Michelle said. “I know about her. I want to talk about _him_ , while he can’t hear us.”

“I can talk about Sean right next to him,” Kim said. “Half the time, he’s buried in his cell, working even when he’s not working. It’s for a good reason, of course—it’s not like he’s representing serial killers—but it’s still frustrating to be on a cruise and find him in the business center.”

“Oh, I know _that_ game,” Anna said. “The only reason Raf isn’t working is”—she stopped herself—“I, uh, threatened to throw his phone onto the 405.”

Kim cracked up. “I wish it were that easy for me! He’d just have his assistant go buy him a new one.”

“Yeah, Carmen would side with me,” Anna laughed. “It’d keep him from texting her constantly, too.”

“Okay, so lawyer, pretty damn hot, Cuban, _clearly_ good with the foreign language dirty talk,” Michelle said. “What’s his bag of lint?”

She was referencing the code the three of them used to discuss the inevitable, sometimes deal-breaking flaw in the men they dated. It began when Michelle dated a guy during their senior year who seemed perfect, until the day she found a garbage bag full of dryer lint. She hadn’t even bothered to ask why it was there. She just broke things off, citing a desire to focus on her career.

“Honestly?” Anna said. “I haven’t found anything that is on the level of a bag of lint. His flaws are nothing abnormal.”

“Oh, come on!” Kim said. “I love Sean, but God, if I have to listen to Linkin Park’s first album one more time…”

“I still can’t believe you married him after you heard it the _first_ time,” Michelle said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kim said. “Come on, Anna. We’re not asking for his deepest, darkest secrets. But the man has to have a flaw _somewhere._ Chews with his mouth open? Can’t figure out how to turn the coffee pot off? Some crazy ex?”

The last one took Anna aback. It was the first time she ever thought about the fact that she didn’t know much about Rafael’s dating life before her. He’d mentioned an ex—Yelina something—before, but she never pressed for details. She figured that if he wanted to talk about her, he would. So, she hedged.

“Well, he _does_ have a tendency to forget to wipe the bathroom sink down after he shaves. The number of times I’ve gone in and set my phone down in a puddle of water…”

Kim laughed. “I wonder if that’s a man thing or a lawyer thing,” she said. “That’s another one of Sean’s flaws—although I’d rather mop up the entire bathroom floor every day than listen to that goddamn album…”

“Seriously, though, Anna,” Michelle said, putting her hand on Anna’s arm, “you seem happier than—well, ever. Especially since the last time I saw you.” She was referring, of course, to just after the assault, when she came to New York to be with Anna. Anna had protested, but Michelle never had been good at listening to direction. Truthfully, Anna was grateful; it would have been too much for her parents to be there, but Michelle was perfect. She kept Anna from retreating into herself; she had insisted that they go for walks in the park and make fun of tourists, dragged her to temple—Michelle’s father was Italian and her mother was Israeli, so Michelle and Anna also shared a common faith—and even went with her to the station the first time to make the report. She would never have survived the aftermath if not for Michelle, and if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be as happy as she was now.

Suddenly, there was a parting of the crowd, just big enough for Anna to sneak in. “Okay, I’ll get the first round,” she said. “Consider it an apology for not getting out here sooner. Whiskey or tequila?”

When the three women got back to the table, Rafael and Sean were engaged in a conversation about how much they both hated defense attorneys; Sean worked for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, advising on policy and legal affairs in the Orange County office. As such, Sean didn’t do much litigation, but he had seen more than his share of what predators could do to children and had no stomach for attorneys who defended them. The both rose from their seats as the women set the shots down on the table.

“Oh, thank God, you went with tequila,” Rafael said. “Whiskey should be enjoyed, not chugged.”

“Yeah, well, let’s see if you’re thanking God tomorrow morning. This one”—she motioned toward Anna—“was quite the tequila shooter in her day. It was hard to keep up with her!”

Rafael raised an eyebrow. “Really? I’ve never seen you have more than three glasses of wine at a time!”

Michelle laughed. “It’s true! The bartender who worked here when we were in college would see her coming and immediately pour a shot right when we walked in the door.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “I told you,” she said to Rafael. “Misspent youth.”

Sean picked up his shot glass. “Well, here’s to new friendships”—he looked toward Rafael—“and renewed ones.”

Everyone clinked their glasses together and threw their shots back. But before Anna drained her glass, she took just a second to look around the table. Her two best friends, one of their husbands, and her boyfriend were all in one room. Her two lives—the one she had before her assault, and the one she’d built with Rafael—had merged into one, a realization that warmed her heart more than a shot of tequila ever could.

* * *

“So,” Michelle said, sipping her Long Island, “there’s a big, solo number for John Adams toward the end of the show. It’s his swan song, basically—he’s about to give up on the whole thing, and then gets a last-minute burst of inspiration from a letter from his wife. It turns into a big _thing_. The whole stage is darkened, and he’s up there all alone, just him and the spotlight.”

“Oh, God, I feel a nightmare coming,” Kim said. Michelle had been telling them about the production of _1776_ that she had just finished working sound and lights for. It was a huge success, despite the fact that the guy playing the lead role was, apparently, as irritating as John Adams was said to have been.

“Well…” Michelle looked up at the ceiling innocently. “I _may_ have told my guy running lights to just…slide the spotlight a few inches over every night just before the stage went dark. Not enough to destroy the audience experience. Just enough to make Mr. I’m-An-Equity-Actor-Bow-Down-To-Me miss his mark for a second and throw him off his game.”

“Oh my God, stop!” Anna was almost doubled over laughing. “Tell me you didn’t get in trouble for that.”

Michelle shrugged. “Who the hell was gonna yell at me? The director? He was too busy counting his rave reviews to care about the lighting. And before Obnoxious and Disliked could change out of his costume every night, I was already outta there, so he never got the chance.”

Kim and Sean, snuggled together in the booth as if they had finally realized this was also a date night, were both shaking their heads. This was not surprising to either of them, clearly. Rafael was, on the other hand, quite entertained. Michelle had a definite flair for the dramatic, something he routinely tried to accomplish in the courtroom.

“Have I mentioned you are never babysitting?” Kim asked. “My child will end up questioning my authority before she can even talk.”

“Hey, I’m a great aunt!” Michelle replied. “And besides, it’s not my fault. Jews are supposed to be argumentative, remember?” She nudged Anna.

“Hence why I’m going to law school,” Anna laughed. She stood up, slightly wobbly, and grabbed her wristlet. “Okay, next round’s on me.”

Rafael scooted out of the booth after her. “No, no, this one is on me. Anyone else, while my wallet’s open?”

“I’ll take another,” Sean said, holding up his empty beer glass. He’d had one shot of tequila and then switched to an IPA. He reached for his wallet. “You sure I can’t give you—”

“Not a chance. Please.”

“I’m good.” Kim gestured to her glass of water. “I’m going to have to be at least slightly functional tomorrow. Kids don’t understand hangovers.”

“Michelle?”

“I’ll get one more Long Island, and then I swear, I’m done. And I’m not even going to argue with you about paying, because I can already tell that’s a lost cause.”

“Wise choice,” Anna said, to which Rafael pinched her side. She squealed and slapped him on the arm as they walked toward the bar. When they were out of earshot, she asked him, “Are you having fun?”

He kissed her on the cheek. “Of course I am! Your friends are exactly what I expected.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“I haven’t met anyone in your life who hasn’t been wonderful,” he assured her. “I haven’t had this much fun out with a group in a while. Usually when I’m out with the squad, it’s because something awful has happened.”

“We should really change that.” She turned back toward the bar, but almost immediately whipped back around, a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God.”

His eyebrows knitted together. “Anna? What’s wrong?”

She buried her face in his shoulder and mumbled into his ear, “He’s a fucking bartender here.”

He was momentarily confused, but then it hit him. “You’re joking,” he replied, looking over her shoulder. “Which one?”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “The tall one, glasses, long hair. He must have just gotten here; he wasn’t up there when I went to get the shots.”

He craned his neck to get a better look. Indeed, the guy behind the bar was about Carisi’s build, with dark, chin-length hair and Buddy Holly glasses, but in Rafael’s estimation, wasn’t anything special. He looked like every other hipster in Brooklyn. It was strange; he couldn’t imagine Anna ever being into this guy. Then again, he couldn’t imagine Anna with anyone other than him.

“You know what?”

She looked at the floor and wishing a hole would open in it and swallow her. “What?”

He fixed her with his steely, courtroom gaze. “Go order the drinks.”

“ _What?!_ ” She was aghast. “You want me to go order drinks from my ex—ex something?”

He nodded. “Yep. I do.” He gave her the cash that was in his hand.

“I can’t!” She shook her head emphatically. “It’s not like he won’t remember me, Raf. We may not have been serious, but I guarantee you, he’ll remember the girl who threw a drink in his face and blew up his relationship!”

He was holding her gently by the shoulders now. “Anna, you told me how much you loved this place, and how many nights you spent here with your friends”—he jerked his head back toward the booth—“so don’t let this schmuck take tonight away from you. You’ve faced _much_ worse than him. And,” he added, “just like before, I’ll be right here, in your corner.”

If it had been anyone else saying it, Anna might have been annoyed. But something about the way Rafael was looking at her made her feel stronger. He was right there with her, and she knew it. He always had been. So, she took a deep breath, lifted her chin, shook her hair out, and turned back around, pushing her way up to the bar.

It took a minute before he made his way over to her, but as soon as they locked eyes, it was clear that he recognized her. His eyes widened momentarily, but his face relaxed quickly into impassivity. He all but _sauntered_ over to her, hitching up his black jeans over his non-existent hips. She briefly wondered if he still bought his jeans in the women’s section.

“Anna?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.

She did her best to appear carefree, even though she was shaking. “Hey! Long time!”

“Jesus, I haven’t seen you in—what’s it been, six, seven years?” He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Still a fan of miniskirts, I see.”

She stifled an eyeroll. “Yeah, something like that. How’ve you been? Still in the band?”

He grinned lopsidedly. “Yeah, of course. Still trying to make it work. Been bartending here on the side for a couple months now. I can’t believe you still come here!”

“Oh, well, I don’t actually live here anymore. Moved to New York a few years ago, actually.”

“Yeah? Well, I guess that’d explain why I haven’t seen you around. You like it out there?”

“I do,” she said. “I’m actually in law school now.”

“Really?” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s interesting. Never took you for a lawyer.”

“Well, I never took you for a bartender. Last I knew you were the door guy at Swingers.” _Shots fired,_ she thought. “Anyway, can I get another IPA, two Long Islands, and a double scotch, neat?”

He laughed. “Who the hell is drinking the scotch?”

Suddenly, Rafael was at her side, as though the word “scotch” had summoned him. “You need help with the drinks?” he asked.

“Yeah, as soon as Luke gets them to me.” She turned back to Luke and handed him the cash. “This should cover it.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Who’s this?”

Rafael eyed Emo Carisi suspiciously. “Hey. I’m Rafael.”

“Hey, man,” Luke said. “You a friend of Anna’s?”

“Actually,” Anna cut in, “he’s my boyfriend. Raf, this is Luke. The old friend from Swingers I told you about.”

Luke’s eyebrows shot up. “Your _boyfriend_? Are you dating one of your law professors or something?”

“Excuse me?” Rafael shot back. “Her _law professor_? Who the hell do you think—”

Anna shot Luke the most annoyed glare she could muster. “You know what, Luke? Just pour the damn drinks, all right?” She turned away to calm Rafael down, when she felt a hand on her arm.

“You know,” he said, loud enough for Rafael to hear, “when I knew you, you liked drummers, not dads.”

She shrugged him off, almost violently. “Make the goddamn drinks, Luke! We’ll be back for them.”

She turned back toward Rafael, who looked like a bomb had gone off in his head. Anyone else would have simply seen the anger etched in his face, but she knew him too well. He had always been sensitive about their age difference, and she’d spent a long time pulling him out of that insecurity. And now this utter jackass who, in retrospect, she barely _knew_ , had done more damage than she cared to think about.

That was when she snapped. She pulled her phone out of the back pocket of her skirt and texted Michelle, saying that she and Rafael were still waiting for the drinks and were going to get some air while they were being made. Then, wordlessly, she took Rafael by the arm and dragged him out of the crowd.

Instantly forgetting about his anger, he yelled ahead of him, “Anna? What are you—”

She didn’t reply. For a second, he wondered if she was mad at him for something. Or worse, she was having some kind of panic attack. Maybe the way that guy had grabbed her had brought something back from her assault. While these nightmare scenarios were playing through his mind, he let her lead him toward the back of the bar, until they came to a narrow hallway. The music was louder back here, since the speakers were positioned against the back wall next to the hallway. Before he realized what was happening, she opened a door to her left and dragged him inside a small, dark room with wood-paneled walls.

They were, he realized, in the ladies’ room.

As soon as she locked the bathroom door, she grabbed him by the shirt. “C’mere,” she whispered as she pounced on him, shoving him against the wall.

“Anna!” he exclaimed, glancing around for—well, he didn’t know, really. It was a single room, so only one person—or in this case, two—could be in there at a time. “We can’t do this here!”

She stripped her blazer off and threw it onto a nearby cabinet. “Why not?” she asked, nipping at his earlobe and kissing her way down his jawline. “You said yourself you wanted to show me how fuckable I am.”

He groaned as she sucked gently on the side of his neck, sure she was leaving marks. “I know, and you’re not wrong, but this—what if we get caught?”

She smiled as she pressed herself into him and felt him hardening against her. “Well, I guess we need to make it quick, huh?”

This would be, by far, the most unconventional place he’d ever had sex, but something about that fact made him even more turned on. It didn’t hurt that she was moving his hand between her thighs. And that was when he realized she wasn’t wearing anything under her skirt.

“ _Mujer,_ you are going to be the death of me,” he gasped, his resolve breaking.

She drew his zipper down and pushed his jeans and boxers past his hips, freeing him from their confines. “I think you’ve proven on multiple occasions that you are more than capable of keeping up with me.” Her hands were roaming all over his body, from his neck to his chest down to his rock-hard erection. As she was about to drop to her knees to take him into her mouth, he grabbed her ass, planting kisses and soft bites on her neck. She moaned softly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to—”

“Not this time, _mi amor_ ,” he murmured against her ear. “Like you said, we need to be quick.” His hands were pressing into her ass, and she knew that the next day she would see bruises as big as they were, but she didn’t much care. He pulled back and gave her a burning look. Her red lipstick was smudged just slightly, making her look positively _wanton_. “Think I can make you come in two minutes?”

“The way I’m feeling, you can probably do it in one,” she moaned. He lifted her up and pressed her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around his waist, guiding him into her carefully. But once he was there, he wasted no time burying himself in her. The angle made it so that every time he fucked into her, she got just enough friction against her clit to make her beg for more. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, and he was holding her up by the backs of her thighs. She was _still_ amazed by his upper body strength, even after all this time. “How are you—still holding—onto—me?”

He wrapped a hand in her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her neck so that he could kiss his way up her throat. After a moment, he looked into her eyes, their pupils blown wide with desire. “I will always have the strength if it means being inside you,” he groaned.

She pulled him in by the back of his neck and kissed him, deep and hard, desperate to be closer to him. The fact that they had to be quick about it or risk setting off suspicion was unbelievably hot. It set her entire body on fire to know that she was going to walk out of this bathroom with shaky legs, dripping wet.

Suddenly, he moved them so she could sit perched on the vanity. She wondered what he was up to for a moment, but then felt his fingers circle her clit in time with the slamming of his hips. “Oh, _Christ_!” she wailed, gripping the edges of the sink. As she leaned back, he hit a new angle inside her and she bit back a scream. “This is—your cock is so—so thick— _fuck!_ ”

“You like getting fucked like this?” he whispered in her ear, knowing how much she liked when he talked dirty to her. “¿ _Te gustas cómo me siento dentro de ti_? You like bouncing on this thick cock?”

“God, yes!” she cried, hoping the music was loud enough to cover it. “Harder, I need it harder, Rafael!”

That was when he knew she was getting dangerously close to falling over the edge; most of the time, he was “Raf,” occasionally “Rafi” if she felt like teasing him. He was only “Rafael” in two situations: when they were having a serious conversation or when she was close to an orgasm. He yanked her shirt up and her black lace bra down. The sight of her breasts bouncing with every snap of his hips was enough to put him over the edge, but he held on so that he could bring her with him.

“You’re so tight,” he growled into her ear, feeling a coil tightening in his groin. “I could fuck you for hours and it still wouldn’t be enough. I get hard just thinking about you and all the ways I’ve made you cum. You’re every fantasy I’ve ever had. Is this what _you_ fantasize about?”

She wrapped her legs tighter around his waist as he continued to hammer her into oblivion. “Don’t—need—fantasy—” she gasped. He grinned against her neck and increased the speed of his fingers between her legs. “You’re—better—than any— _aah_!” She bit her lip so hard she was afraid she was going to draw blood.

“That’s it,” he said, with the same authority he used in the courtroom. “Let me feel it, Anna.” He knew that giving her commands would make her see stars. “Give _papi_ what we both know you want. Now!”

Between his filthy words, the sound of her name on his lips, and the way his fingers played her, her entire body clenched. Her nails dug into his upper back and she rutted against him. “Oh, fuck, Rafael, right there, Jesus, don’t stop, please don’t stop, shit shit shit _shiiiiiit_!”

He put his mouth over hers, muffling the sound of both her orgasm and his own. He internally screamed her name as he unloaded inside of her and gave her a few more uneven thrusts just for good measure.

They were both in the process of cleaning up when there was a harsh rapping on the door. “Hello?” a voice called. “Is someone in there?”

Rafael’s face reddened for an entirely new reason as he pulled his pants back up. “How the hell are we going to get out of this one?”

Anna finished washing her hands. “You know what? We’re not.”

His eyes darted over her face. “You do realize they’re going to know what we just did?”

She grinned. “What’re they gonna do? Ban us?”

He shook his head. “You’re insane, you know that?”

She gave him one last, long kiss and winked at him. “You wanna see insane? Watch this.” With that, she flung open the door and marched out, Rafael in tow. The person knocking was a twenty-something woman who, judging by how quickly she rushed past them, had to pee so badly that she clearly didn’t care why two people emerged from a single restroom.

By that time, Rafael had forgotten all about the drinks they’d paid for until he realized Anna was leading him right back to the bar to get them. Luke was just putting the finishing touches on the second Long Island when Anna pushed her way up to the bar right in front of him. Rafael stood to her side, avoiding eye contact. He didn’t need to commit any other crimes that night.

“Hey,” Luke said. “I was beginning to think you left.”

Anna handed the beer and the scotch to Rafael. “After what you said, I should have, but I already paid for the drinks. Can I also get a water?”

“That’s true.” He filled a glass of water and pushed it toward her. She drank about half of it and set it back down. “Look, I didn’t mean to—it’s just—” He kept glancing up at Rafael, and Anna was enjoying watching him squirm. “It’s just that he doesn’t seem like your type, is all.”

 _Ah,_ she thought. _There it is._

She smiled. “Well, with age comes experience, asshole, and based on my history with you, I guarantee you could never give a woman the _experience_ he just gave me.”

And then Rafael watched as Anna threw the remainder of the water at Luke, picked up the other two drinks, and walked briskly away as the bartender wiped his stunned face.

* * *

“I _still_ can’t believe you got away with that _again_!” Kim said as they all stood outside the bar, saying their goodbyes.

“Hey, he had it coming,” Anna replied. “Both times!”

“Yeah, I agree, but how did we not get kicked out?”

Anna laughed. “Do you really think Luke was gonna go tell the manager that he got a drink thrown in his face by a girl? He’d sooner be seen at a Backstreet Boys concert than admit something like that!”

“I just wish I’d _seen_ either time!” Michelle said. “Anyway, I need to go. It’s a long drive back to the Valley.”

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” Sean asked. “We could take you home and I could bring you back to your car tomorrow.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she replied. “I had a glass of water between each drink for a reason. You guys okay?”

“We got a Lyft,” Anna said. “Which should be here any minute, actually. It was _so_ good to see you guys.”

“We need to do this more often than once every five years,” Kim said as she and the other two women embraced. “Like, _really._ ”

“I’ll make sure of it,” Rafael said, and then turned to Sean. “Good to meet you. And hey, if you’re ever in New York and want to meet some _real_ asshole defense attorneys, I got a bunch I could introduce you to.”

“I’d love to see bigger asshole defense attorneys than the ones that live in California,” Sean laughed, and gave Rafael a handshake that turned into what Anna called an Amaro hug; named after Amanda’s old partner, who was apparently the height of near-toxic masculinity, it consisted of two pats on the back while hugging, then an immediate pull-back. Very manly, not too emotional.

“Rafael, it was an absolute pleasure to meet you,” Kim said. “And I’m going to hold you to that remark about getting out here more often.”

“You won’t have to,” he said, offering a hand, but Kim gave him a quick hug instead.

While Anna was saying goodbye to Kim and Sean, Michelle pulled Rafael into an embrace. “Thank you for taking such good care of her.”

“You don’t need to thank me for that. I love her.”

“I don’t just mean for taking care of her as a girlfriend,” she said, and he could swear he saw tears in her dark eyes. “I meant thank you for taking care of her during the trial. Without you, she wouldn’t be here. With you.”

He smiled, a little embarrassed. “I could say the same thing about you. You did more for her than you realize. She’s an amazing woman, and I know part of that is because she has amazing people in her life.”

Michelle nodded and blinked back the tears she was trying to hide. “Thanks for the drinks, too!”

“Oh, I’m _always_ good for those,” he laughed. Just then, his and Anna’s car arrived.

“Love you guys,” Anna called out to her three friends as they walked back to their cars. “So much,” she added quietly.

* * *

By the time Anna and Rafael crawled into bed, it was already past one in the morning. They were both exhausted, but at the same time, exhilarated from their escapade in the bathroom. So they played twenty questions, their favorite game when neither of them could sleep. A cool breeze was blowing through the open window, a lovely contrast, Anna thought, to the warmth of Rafael’s chest under her cheek.

“What’s the thing you loved most about growing up here?” he asked.

She thought for a minute. “The sushi.”

He laughed. “You’re joking. All the things about California to love, and you pick sushi?”

“There’s nothing like it, not even in New York City. Sorry not sorry. What’s the worst thing about New York City?”

“Easy,” he said. “Detectives named Carisi.” She smacked him lightly on his chest. “Ow!”

“Not nice!”

“I’m not a nice person in general.” He kissed the top of her head. “That only comes out around you.”

“Oh, I beg to differ. You were really nice to my friends tonight!”

“Well, I have to at least make a good first impression,” he said. “What do _you_ hate most about living in New York City?”

She hesitated. There was something on her mind, something that had been on her mind since earlier that night. “Raf?”

“Yeah?”

“What happened with Yelina?”

The question startled him, and she felt him tense underneath her. “That’s not an answer to my question.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“Why do you want to know?”

“You asked about my dating life before you. She was obviously a big part of yours. And tonight, Kim asked if you had some crazy ex or something, and I realized I don’t really know if—I mean, I don’t want to pry, but I feel like it’s—”

He sighed. “I suppose it’s not fair that I keep it from you.”

Now she felt awkward and uneasy. “If you really don’t want to tell me—”

“No, I do.” He ran his fingertips over her shoulder. “In retrospect, it’s not that big a deal. Kind of like what you said about Luke—something that seemed more serious at the time than it really was. It’s just—I can safely say she was the first woman I ever loved.”

She ran her hand through the smattering of hair on his chest. “First loves are always the hardest to get over.”

He smiled sadly. “Yeah. And I think maybe it’s even harder when they’re the first person you’re intimate with.”

“Are you telling me you lost your virginity to her?”

“I prefer to think of it as a donation,” he replied, smirking despite himself. “But yes. We were eighteen. It was so cliché—we did it in her parents’ bedroom when they were both at work.”

“Oh God,” Anna groaned. “I have never understood how people could do that. The mental images alone—”

He laughed. “We didn’t have many other options. Anyway, I guess it meant more to me than it did to her. I went away to college, she stayed in the Bronx. We made it work for a year or so, even long distance. But at some point, she told me that it just wasn’t working anymore. Maybe six months or so later, I found out she and Alex were a couple.”

“Wow. How did you manage to stay friends with both of them?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a small shrug. “I was angry for a minute, and then got over it; he was my best friend, and he made her happy, and I wanted that for her. For both of them, really. And I think, looking back, there was a small part of me that figured it would hurt more to not have her in my life at all than it would to just be a friend.”

“That makes sense, I guess. So what happened that hurt you so much? I’m guessing it wasn’t just the relationship ending.”

He shifted a bit underneath her. “Well, remember how I just said that a few months after she told me it wasn’t working, I found out that she and Alex were a couple?”

Anna had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Yeah?”

“Well, I _thought_ they started dating after she dumped me. But as it turns out, they were seeing each other six months _before_ that. I think she was trying to make sure that the grass wasn’t just greener on that side. But once she figured out that he had political ambitions and I didn’t, she…”

Anna felt his chest shudder, as if he were choking back a sob. Thinking of anyone hurting him at all was hard enough but knowing that he’d had his heart broken by his best friend and his first love gave her a deep ache in her chest. She snuggled closer to him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “Oh, Raf…I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve that, on your _worst_ day.”

“I didn’t find out until after Alex—until he went to prison. That’s when she told me.”

Her eyebrows nearly shot off her forehead. “Wait, you mean she actually _confessed_ to this?”

He nodded sadly. “She came to my office, furious with me. She thought it was a personal thing, that I was jealous of him. I tried to tell her that I just did my job and that I was sorry. And that’s when she told me. She told me that after she met Alex, she knew I would never be as successful or ambitious as him, and…”

“And what?”

“She said that she knew I would have a mediocre job and a mediocre life, and she wanted something more.” He didn’t sound hurt so much as resigned.

Anna sat up and turned toward him, leaning over him just slightly. “What kind of psychopath—I can’t—in your _office_ —” She was so stunned that she couldn’t even form complete sentences.

He ran his hand down one of her forearms. “I don’t even think she really believed what she said. I think she just wanted to say whatever she thought would hurt me most.” He heard Anna take a breath, but she didn’t say anything. “What is it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“It’s okay. Whatever you’re thinking, I’ve probably already thought it.”

Anna didn’t know how else to say what she felt, except to just say it. “You know what? I’m just going to say it, and judging by what you’ve just told me, you probably _haven’t_ thought it. She’s a terrible person, and she deserves what she got.”

He shook his head. “No, she’s not terr—”

She cut him off. “Yes, she is, Raf. She cheated on you for half a year. And for that matter? Her husband is trash too. He participated in it. He knew, and he did that to you anyway.”

He sighed. “I know. I know all that. But you need to understand, she was the only girl I ever loved, and he was my best friend my _entire_ life. It’s hard to just turn those things off in my brain.”

She put a hand on his forehead, tenderly pushing his hair back. “I can understand that. But I’m telling you, from an objective standpoint, they both _suck_. But you know what else? She chose correctly.” He looked stricken for a minute, and Anna shook her head. “Her husband is in jail. My boyfriend—my _best_ friend—is right here in front of me. I win, and so do you.”

He hesitated, and she could tell that something was on his mind. Before she could ask what it was, he whispered it, so softly that she could barely understand him. “Now do you understand the reason I asked why you chose me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—it wasn’t so long before I met you that she said those things to me, you know. It was just a few years. And I know she was just trying to hurt me, and most of it rolled right off. It didn’t even really hurt so much that she and Alex betrayed me. I could get over that. But the part about having a mediocre life—of all the things I’ve ever been called, mediocre is—well, one thing I never want to be.”

“Come on, Raf, you have to know that’s not true.”

Even in the darkness, she could see the insecurity in his eyes. “I guess she sort of ninja-ed my brain that way. That’s why I didn’t really date after that. I threw myself into my work, because I didn’t think I could find someone who…”

“Who…?”

His voice was small. “Someone who would settle for me.”

At that point, instinct and emotion took over. “May I remind you,” she said, “that just a few hours ago, you banged your hot, younger girlfriend in the bathroom of a bar?”

Then, she grasped the sides of his face gently in her hands and kissed him, steady and sweet. Despite his surprise, he kissed her back, running his hands down her spine as she poured her heart into him. They stayed that way for a few minutes, sparks flying between them, moving their lips and tongues over one another’s.

Finally, she pulled away, and looked at him as seriously as if she were about to give a closing argument of her own. “Rafael Barba,” she whispered, “you are anything _but_ mediocre.”


	5. The World to Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anna takes Rafael to meet her brother, and he sees a whole new side of her. Later that night, they attend Shabbat services with her parents, and each of them surprises the other with an emotional remembrance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, I was writing what was supposed to be the last installment of the Los Angeles trip, but it had turned into 11k+ words, and I thought, “OK, maybe we need to break this into two chapters.” So I did. Angst and fluff ahead! Also, please enjoy this look into my faith - I actually bought a digital copy of my synagogue's prayer book to write this chapter. Because I am, of course, a dork.

“What did you have planned for today?” Miriam asked, serving up the omelets she made for Joseph and herself, while Anna ate her cereal. “Have you been down to Orange County? The beaches in Laguna Niguel are beautiful.”

“I have no desire to drive an hour away to see a bunch of chain restaurants and Republicans,” Anna replied, disdain coloring her voice. “Besides, if we go down there, God knows how long it’ll take us to get home, and I don’t want to miss temple tonight.”

Miriam nearly dropped the dishes on her way to the sink, and Joseph looked up from his newspaper. “Did you just say—”

“Yes, Ma, I said temple.”

“Does Rafael know about this?” Joseph asked.

Before Anna could answer, Rafael strolled into the kitchen, hair still slightly damp from his shower. Anna grinned at how adorable he looked. He was wearing jeans and the Fordham Law t-shirt she’d bought him mostly as a joke (she made a mental note to get a photo for Carisi), and bright red Converse sneakers, because of course he had to get the pair that stood out the most.

“Does Rafael know about what?” he asked.

“Well,” Joseph said, “Anna was just telling us that she wanted to go to services tonight.”

Rafael glanced at her, and the look on her face begged him to play along for the moment. “Yeah, she mentioned that. What time did you say we needed to be back, _mi amor_?”

She blushed at the use of the pet name in front of her parents but was too grateful at his acquiescence to say anything about it. “We should be back here around three so that we have time to shower and change. Services start quarter after six, right, Ma?”

Miriam nodded. “Same as always. Just try to get there fifteen minutes early. We’ll save you spots. Rafael,” she said, turning to him, “can I make you something for breakfast?”

“Oh, I’ll just have some of Anna’s cereal. If she’s willing to share it with me, that is. She’s very protective of her Cinnamon Toast Crunch at home.”

She gave him a look of faux offense. “It is _not_ my fault that you eat the most boring cereal on the planet. You singlehandedly keep Corn Flakes in production.”

“At least my cereal doesn’t come with a toy in the box,” he smirked.

“That’s it.” She hugged the box to her chest. “No cereal for you.”

Miriam and Joseph exchanged an amused look, and then Joseph went to the pantry, pulling out a second box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. He handed it to Rafael, along with the milk, and patted him on the back. “I know my daughter.”

“ _Gracias_ ,” Rafael said, sticking his tongue out at Anna in triumph.

Anna laughed. “Traitor!” she said to her father, who just shrugged and tried not to smile.

“You never did answer my question, honey,” Miriam said. “What did you have planned for today?”

Anna drank the cinnamon-flavored milk from her bowl and took it to the sink. “I was thinking we’d go over to Santa Monica. Maybe Venice Beach.”

“Oh, that would be nice. There’s a great restaurant over there your dad and I just went to—what was it called, hon, do you remember?”

As Anna and her parents discussed the best lunch spots in Santa Monica, Rafael chewed his cereal thoughtfully. What would make Anna suddenly want to go to temple? She described herself as “Jew-ish,” rarely attending services other than for the High Holy Days. Even then, she ended her fast with a bacon cheeseburger, although she swore that she would never tell her parents that. They weren’t conservative by any means, but they were certainly more devout than she was—they didn’t care about most of the kosher laws, but they didn’t eat pork or shellfish, and they attended services every Friday night, so long as they weren’t working. He supposed it was possible that Anna just wanted to spend time with her parents doing something that was important to them—and, presumably, had been important to her at some point—but he had a feeling there was something more to it than that.

“Raf?” Anna saying his name snapped him out of his trance. “You almost ready?”

He realized he’d finished his cereal without even noticing. “Oh, yeah. Can we stop on the way to wherever we’re going and grab coffee, though?”

She laughed and went to the cupboard. “We do have travel mugs, you know,” she said, filling one for him. By now, she knew exactly how to make his coffee—stronger than she could ever drink it, and then a splash of milk. Once in a while, she would throw in a teaspoon of honey and a pinch of cinnamon just to surprise him. She handed him the mug and grabbed a Gatorade out of the fridge. “Ready?”

“Oh, honey, before you guys go—” Miriam caught her daughter by the shoulder. Anna turned back around. “I wondered if maybe you and I could go do a little shopping together tomorrow—assuming, of course, that Rafael doesn’t mind spending a little time alone.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “You and Anna should spend some time together. It’s been years, after all. I’m happy to catch up on some reading.”

“Great!” Miriam exclaimed.

“Lunch too?” Anna asked hopefully.

“Of course. I’ll make a reservation at Fig & Olive for noon?”

“Sounds good.”

Miriam kissed her daughter on the cheek. “Okay, get out of here. Enjoy Santa Monica!”

Anna returned her mother’s kiss and smiled, although Rafael thought he saw a hint of melancholy in it. She turned back to him. “Ready?” she asked again.

He gave a quick wave to her parents as they headed out the door. “Lead the way.”

* * *

“I never thought I’d be driving through a cemetery admiring the scenery,” Rafael said as they got out of the car and stepped onto the grounds of Mount Sinai Cemetery. This far out from the smog of the city, you could actually see the bright blue of the California sky against the lush, green grass. Behind him was a huge mosaic depicting the Jewish experience in America, made of over two million pieces of Venetian glass. Among those depicted in the mosaic were Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the Supreme Court, who wrote the words that Rafael tried to live by: _if we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable._ For a moment, he wondered if, in doing what he had done with Marianna Abreu, he had violated that canon. But he shook the thought off, turning his attention back to Anna.

“It _is_ beautiful, I’ll give you that,” she said. “Forest Lawn’s cemeteries are like this, too, but they’re so _extra_. They’re more like art galleries than resting places. Liberace is buried in the one that’s near here, and I swear, you’d think he designed all of them.”

Rafael laughed. “I’m surprised you even know who Liberace is.”

“What can I say? I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole one day,” she said. “Anyway, Hollywood Forever is kind of cool. They do movie screenings there sometimes. At least they’ll give you maps to where the celebrities are, though. That way you don’t have people traipsing all over the place looking for them.”

“Forest Lawn won’t do that?”

“They’ll actually kick you out if they figure out that you’re looking for celebrities.” She rolled her eyes. “It seems stupid, doesn’t it? People work their whole lives to be famous and then end up lost in a sea of graves after they’re gone.”

He shook his head. “This city is so bizarre.”

“You have no idea.”

“So,” he said, looking around, “are we here for a specific reason? Going celebrity hunting?”

“No.” Her face changed just slightly, as if she had suddenly remembered why they were here. She took his hand. “Let’s walk.”

Rafael always felt weird walking on cemetery lawns—like he was disturbing people. They passed several wall crypts and a mosaic on the ground, which Anna explained was where prayer books and texts were buried when they were no longer usable. Other than that, she was silent. At first, he thought this was because they were in a cemetery, but he didn’t think she would go mute just because of that. She would more likely just speak in hushed tones. Finally, they came to a stop in front of a gated plot, surrounded on three sides by shoulder-level brick walls. Anna reached her free hand out to touch the gate, and then pulled back as though she’d touched a hot pan. The realization of where they were and what they were doing there hit him like a tidal wave.

“Anna,” he whispered, “are we—”

She couldn’t speak due to the lump in her throat, so she nodded, staring straight ahead. She seemed to be in a trance. He squeezed her hand tighter, trying to gently shake her out of it. Finally, she turned toward him and looked him in the eyes. “He’s in there.”

“Do you want to go in?”

She bit her bottom lip, trying not to cry at the thought of her brother below the ground, his body wasting away to nothing. She suddenly felt overheated, despite wearing a lightweight skater dress. “I—I want to—but—”

“But?” he asked. She looked down, as if she were ashamed of something. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“It’s just—I haven’t been here since the burial. I didn’t even come back for the stone setting. I feel like I’ve been a”—her voice broke—“a bad sister.”

He could see tears forming in her eyes, overcast with pain. Her chin trembled and he lifted it gently toward him. “Anna, you aren’t a bad sister. This kind of thing can be extraordinarily painful.”

Something about the way he said that made her think he was speaking from experience. “How do you know that?”

He shook his head. “No, this isn’t about me and—”

“No. I want to know. Please tell me.”

He looked into her eyes for a long moment. She looked so pale and heartsick, something he hadn’t seen since the first time they’d met all those years ago. And if there was something that he could offer to help her, he was more than willing to give it. So he led her by her hand to a nearby bench. “I haven’t talked with anyone about this in a very long time. In fact, I think you’ll actually be the first.”

She didn’t take her eyes off of his and gripped his hand like her life depended on it. “I’m listening.”

He inhaled deeply. “I don’t have much in the way of close family. My father—well, you know the deal with my father. He didn’t have any siblings, and his parents died before I was old enough to remember them. And most of the Diaz family—my mother’s family, that is—is all the way in Miami, so we don’t see them very often. The only family I grew up around were my mom and her mother.”

Rafael rarely talked about his family, but Anna figured there was a reason, so she didn’t ever press the issue. What he had described about his father a few days ago was the most she’d ever heard at once. “That must have been hard,” she said.

“It was,” he nodded. “Especially with my dad being the way he was. The only escape Mom and I had was to my _abuelita’s_ apartment. Her name was Catalina, by the way.”

“That’s a beautiful name.”

He smiled at the memory of learning his grandmother’s first name; he thought it was _Abuelita_ until he was six. “I loved her very much, as you can imagine. She was kind and generous—everything my father wasn’t. She always said I would end up a judge. _El Juez,_ she called me. If it weren’t for her and my mom, I’d probably have ended up like a lot of the kids from my neighborhood—in jail or dead.” Anna shuddered slightly at that thought. It was hard to imagine him as anything other than the man he had grown up to be. “Anyway, a few years ago, she got very sick and was in the hospital for a couple weeks. They ended up releasing her because Medicare wouldn’t cover a longer stay, so she went home to a third-floor walk-up apartment, all alone.” He cleared his throat and looked down at their joined hands. “My mom was trying to take care of her as best she could. I, of course, thought I knew better than anyone how to handle the situation, so I talked _Mami_ into moving her into a nursing home. Both she and _Abuelita_ were resistant, and _Abuelita_ ended up getting pretty pissed off at me for it. Eventually, Mom talked her into it, but…”

Anna saw tears forming in his eyes now. She loved him for being so vulnerable with her but hated seeing him cry more than anything in the world. “Raf…”

He squeezed her hand. “The day _Mami_ went to start packing up the apartment, I got a call. She wouldn’t tell me on the phone what was wrong. She just said I needed to come. So I did. And when I got there…” He didn’t need to say anything else; Anna knew what happened. So she did the only thing she could: wrapped him in a tight embrace while he wept softly on her shoulder. They sat that way for a few minutes until he pulled away. “I felt so guilty. I felt like I had caused it. The last thing she ever said to me was to go help somebody else. And I know that she was old, she was already sick, and that I couldn’t have possibly known what was coming, but—”

“It’s easy to say, but harder to accept,” Anna finished.

He wiped his eyes and nodded. “The reason I’m telling you this—I haven’t been to her grave since the funeral. That guilt—it keeps me away. She died thinking that I—”

Anna shook her head. “Hush,” she murmured. “She died knowing that you loved her and that she loved you. One hurtful remark doesn’t take away a lifetime of love.”

Her words were an arrow into his heart. He pushed a few strands of hair out of her face and left his hand on her cheek, gazing helplessly into her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make this about me, like I said. I just wanted to make you feel—”

“Less alone,” she replied, recalling the conversation they’d had just earlier that month. “I don’t know if it will help, but you just made it easier for me to do this. Because I know you’re with me.” She turned to look back at the gate. “Will you wait here for me?”

He kissed her hand. “Of course. I’ll be right here, right behind you.”

Anna stood up on shaky legs and walked back to the plot, and although it was only a few steps away, it felt like the journey took a year. He watched as she stood outside of it for a moment, nervously bouncing up and down on her toes, the muscles in her calves flexing with the movement. She pulled her blonde waves into a ponytail at the nape of her neck and held it there for a second, before releasing it and dropping her head.

Taking a deep breath, she unlatched the gate. It opened inward, allowing her to step forward onto the well-manicured grass. She looked around as though it would appear different inside than it had looked from the outside. What she loved most was that it didn’t seem like a grave as much as a garden, especially now that time had passed. When they had laid Jakey to rest, there were no flowers or ivy. All that had been there was the disturbed ground that they had taken turns throwing onto his casket after it was lowered. For some reason, Anna had never been able to picture this place with anything in her head but that memory—the memory of the last thing she ever did for her brother. But seeing the private Eden that had grown from that day, she almost felt comforted. The sad irony, she thought, was that she and her parents had spent years not knowing where Jakey was, and now, they would always be able to find him. But at least he was in a beautiful place.

She stepped forward carefully, as though the ground would open up beneath her feet if she went too fast. But she found that as soon as she started walking, she couldn’t stop, until she reached the headstone. She hadn’t been part of the design process; her parents had asked for her input, but, at the time, she was still so angry at her brother—and at herself—that she didn’t want anything to do with it. She hadn’t even seen a picture of it. It was an upright stone, mahogany granite, the etching done in white. At the top was, unsurprisingly, a Star of David, encircling the Hebrew translation of “here lies.” Beneath that, though, was what stunned Anna.

 _Beloved Son and Brother  
_ _Jacob “Jakey” Adam Stein  
_ _March 17, 1987 – April 8, 2009  
_ _Sweet in his ways, observant in his mitzvahs  
_ ת נ צ ב ה

Her parents, despite their grief and despite Anna fleeing the state in the aftermath of her brother’s death, had thought to inscribe her nickname for him on the stone.

She was suddenly full of regret for refusing to be part of the process to begin with. And it was then that she realized that’s why her parents had done what they did. They might still be in too much pain to talk much about him, but they knew Anna and Jakey were practically twins. No one loved him more than his sister. And they wanted the world—and Anna—to know that they knew that.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her fingertips, cursing herself for not remembering Kleenex. She sat down where she estimated her brother’s feet were. “Didn’t want to sit on your head,” she whispered, crossing her legs underneath her. “I’m regretting this stupid dress now. You’d be laughing at me, I know. Maybe you are anyway.” She plucked a blade of grass, twirling it between her fingers. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here since…I’ve, um, been out of town. Moved all the way across the country, started my life over, the way I wish you could have done. The way I _thought_ you were doing.”

She licked her lips and looked up at the granite marker in front of her, wondering why her parents picked that color over the gray or blue options she knew were available. “You’d love New York, Jakey. No surfing, but more bookstores than you can count. And the sushi is almost as good. But don’t tell—” She laughed quietly. “I used to think people who talked to headstones were insane. But I guess you don’t really know why people do it until it’s you.”

A light breeze blew by, rattling the leaves on the oak tree behind the back wall of the garden. “You know, Jakey, I was so mad at you and so mad at _me_ that I didn’t even tell the most important person in my life about you until a little over a week ago. I was mad at you for doing what you did, and then I got mad at myself because I thought I caused it. And you know what’s funny?” She ran her hand over the grass in front of her, almost like she was ruffling his hair. “It’s only because you died that I even moved to New York. And so much shit has happened between then and now, it’d be impossible for me to talk about all of it. Maybe you already know about everything. But in case you don’t, I want you to know something.”

She climbed up to sit back on her heels. “I don’t think you died for a reason. I don’t think God had some master plan to take my big brother from me so that I could find my way to happiness. But I do know deep down that I’m not just talking to a headstone. I know you’re out there somewhere, and I just want you to know that I’m not mad at you anymore.” She began to cry. “I love you, Jakey. I’ve never stopped loving you. I hope you’re in _Olam ha-Ba_ , with a surfboard and a microphone. I miss you every day, and I wish you could be here to meet—” She stopped. “Wait here a second.” As soon as she said it, she laughed quietly. “Yeah, I know, shut up.”

Scrambling to her feet, she walked back out of the garden and passed through the gate. To her surprise, Rafael wasn’t on his phone. He was sitting on the bench, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. His eyes were closed, and his head was bowed, as if he were praying. She cleared her throat, not wanting to startle him. He looked up immediately and she thought she saw tears in his eyes but couldn’t be sure. He gave her a small smile.

“ _Mi amor_? Are you ready?”

“Actually,” she replied, “could you—I mean—I’d like you to meet my brother.” His eyebrows shot up slightly. She could tell that he hadn’t been prepared for this. “I mean, if you don’t want to, I totally—”

He stood up and walked toward her. “No, I just wasn’t expecting you to ask. But of course. Of course I’d like to meet him.”

When they passed back through the gate, Rafael took a minute to appreciate the beautiful surroundings that Anna’s parents had given her brother. There were pink and white carnations around the large headstone at the back wall, and ivy covered a good portion of the bricks. The back half of the garden was shaded by the oak tree, and the grass seemed even more well-tended here.

Finally, as they stood in front of the marker, Anna wrapped an arm around one of Rafael’s and laced her fingers through his. “Raf, I’d like you to meet my brother, Jake. Jakey, this is Rafael. Although I suspect you already know that.”

Rafael bowed his head, a greeting of sorts. “Hey, Jake. It’s good to meet you. Your sister’s told me a lot about you.”

“All the embarrassing stuff, obviously,” Anna added. “Lots of naked baby photos involved.”

Rafael laughed. “Don’t worry, Jake. Your mom offered to show me your sister’s high school yearbooks later. I’m sure there’s plenty of material there.”

“This is why I wish you could be here to meet him,” Anna said to the headstone. Rafael’s eyes fell to the Hebrew inscription on the bottom of the stone, and she followed his gaze. “It’s from the first book of Samuel. It means, ‘May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.’”

“I’ve seen it on a lot of the stones here.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Jakey. That’s on me for not being involved.” She looked at Rafael. “He hated being part of the crowd.”

“Like brother like sister,” Rafael murmured in reply. She sat back down on the grass and he followed, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and drawing her into him. “Tell me something else about him.”

Wordlessly, she reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out what looked like a folded piece of paper. But when she opened it, Rafael saw that it was actually a photograph of a young boy and girl. They couldn’t have been more than eighteen or so, but there was no doubt about who they were: Jakey, as tall as Joseph with the same dark features, and Anna, who was very clearly mid-laugh as the photo was taken. They were both dressed in semi-formal clothes—Anna in a coral, knee-length, strapless dress and Jakey in a shiny, grey suit and bright blue tie—and were each holding microphones. The background of the photo looked almost like a wedding reception.

“That was our cousin Andy’s bar mitzvah,” Anna said, as though she was reading his mind. “They had karaoke. Jakey was _hugely_ into karaoke. He was so good at it.”

Rafael grinned. “As I recall, you’re not so bad at it either.”

“Shut up,” she said, shoving against him playfully. “I sing off-key in the shower. Jakey would put on _performances_. He would strut through crowds like he was possessed by Mick Jagger.”

“What was his go-to song?” he asked, laughing.

“Believe it or not, his favorite was ‘It’s Not Unusual’ by Tom Jones. And yes, he would _totally_ do ‘The Carlton’ while singing it. I wish cell phone cameras had been a bigger thing back then. He’d be all over YouTube.”

“No doubt. And I bet I know who’d make sure of it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t even have gotten a chance. He’d have done it all on his own. He had no shame at all.”

He took the photo from her and ran his thumb over the image of her captured in it. “So what was the duet?”

She studied the photo in his hands, as though it might animate. “You’re going to laugh.”

“I promise I won’t.”

She blushed. “We did a very over-acted version of ‘I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.’” He tried to hold back his laugher as he promised but he couldn’t contain it. She rolled her eyes. “I knew it!”

“I’m sorry!” he exclaimed. “It’s just—how did you convince him to do that?”

“Excuse me, but who do you think started my Disney obsession?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You mean it’s _his_ fault I have to suffer?” He looked at the headstone. “Thanks a lot, Jake!”

Anna giggled. “And for the record, he made me be Zazu for that performance. He wanted to be star.”

“Can I ask what made you bring this photo with you?”

She shrugged. “This is the last time we ever did that. And it’s one of the last memories I have of him before everything went to hell.”

They sat in silence for a minute, feeling the sun as warm on their shoulders as it had been at the beach the other day. Suddenly, she moved out of his embrace and took the photo back from him. He climbed to his feet. “Ready to go?”

“In a minute,” she replied. He watched as she got to her knees, put the photo in front of the headstone, and then pushed back to rest on her heels. Then, she closed her eyes and started reciting a prayer in Hebrew, one she said in secret once a year on the anniversary of his death. It seemed only right that she recite it while she was with him. _“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit Yisrael, ba’agala uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: amen…”_

Rafael had never heard Anna pray before. He hadn’t even known she still practiced her faith. That was why it had surprised him so much when he’d heard she wanted to go to services that night. But maybe it had something to do with this.

When she finished, she kissed her fingers and pressed them to Jakey’s headstone, and then took two small stones out of the same pocket she had carried the photo in. She got to her feet and placed them on top of the marker. Then she turned back to Rafael. “Now we can go,” she said.

As she began to walk out of the garden, he caught her by the waist. “I’ll be there in a second, okay?” When she gave him an inquisitive look, he shrugged. “I know your family is Jewish, but my _abuelita_ would never forgive me if I left a gravesite without saying a prayer of my own.”

Anna couldn’t help smiling at the fact that just an hour ago, Rafael had never spoken more than a sentence about his grandmother to her and now he was referencing her in conversation. She nodded and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll meet you by the car.”

After she left, Rafael did pray. But he also had his own private conversation with her brother, much like the one he’d had with his _abuelita_ while Anna had been in the garden alone.

* * *

Anna and Rafael spent the remainder of the afternoon at Santa Monica Pier, a totally Californian experience if ever there was one. They watched surfers again, as they had in Malibu, and grabbed lunch from a food truck. They rode the Pacific Wheel and the carousel, and Anna even convinced him to rent bikes and ride one of the paths for a while—at one point, she raced him, standing up on the pedals and gliding by him, skirt flying around her legs. They were back at the house by three o’clock, both needing to shower before services.

“Are you sure you don’t mind going tonight?” she asked from the bedroom as she finished blow drying her hair. “I know I kind of sprung it on you.”

He carefully dragged his razor down his throat. “It’s totally fine,” he replied, rinsing it under the faucet. “I’m just surprised. You’ve never gone to temple in all the time we’ve been together.”

“I may not go much anymore, but from the time I was old enough to go on my own, I went basically every week, even when my parents were working. It was kind of like therapy for me. I know that must sound silly, but…”

She walked into the bathroom, where she found him wearing only a towel wrapped around his waist as he finished shaving. Sometimes she felt like he was even sexier half-naked than fully naked. Add to that, watching him shave was secretly one of her favorite things to do. Even though it was just one of the little moments that made up a life together, there was something about it that made her breath catch in her chest and her heart leap into her throat. Moments like that reminded her of how lucky she was to be with him.

“It’s not silly at all. I mean, I still wear this”—he touched the gold cross around his neck—“under my clothes, even though I don’t go to Church routinely.” He hesitated. “Speaking of which, is it a problem if I keep it on?”

“Why would it be?” She twisted her hair into a braid, hoping he didn’t notice as she ogled him. “It’s not like you’re going to go in there trying to convert people.”

He laughed as he rinsed and dried his face. “I am the last person to try to tell other people what to believe. There’s no—” He stopped as he caught her eyes in the mirror. She was looking at him with an expression that was halfway between aroused and adoring. “What? Did I miss a spot?”

She turned and wrapped her arms around him. His skin was warm under her hands, and she could smell the leftover scent of his shaving cream. “I just love you a lot, that’s all.” She kissed him on his jawline, eliciting a soft sigh. “Not every boyfriend would go to some boring religious service on his vacation.”

“First of all, I know it’s not going to be boring. If nothing else, it’s a cultural experience. And second, I told you I wanted to do things that meant something to you. And speaking of that,” he added, “what was the prayer you said earlier?”

She pulled back from him and walked back to the bedroom to finish getting dressed. “It was the Mourner’s Kaddish.” She slipped into her gold ballet flats and smoothed the lines of her green shift dress. After fastening a thin, gold belt around her waist, she looked in the mirror, trying to decide if she should put on makeup or not. She opted for not.

“The what?” He came back into the bedroom and started to get dressed. Anna had laid his clothes out for him on the bed, something she did occasionally when she felt capable of selecting something appropriate. She never tried it with his work clothes, but she could generally handle his more casual outfits. For that evening, she’d chosen a pink polo and khakis. “This seems pretty casual,” he said, before she could answer his previous question.

“I promise you, it’s appropriate. My temple is not exactly conservative. You’ll see an occasional older man wearing a suit or a woman wearing pantyhose, but that’s not the norm.” She began transferring the contents of her purse to a different one. “To answer your question, the Mourner’s Kaddish is a prayer for the dead, in theory. But in reality, the words translate to a prayer confirming a belief in God, even after suffering the pain of having someone taken from you. Technically, you’re not supposed to say it alone. But a lot of Reform synagogues have loosened the rules on that. I say it every year on the anniversary of his death. The way I figure it, God probably doesn’t mind me praying alone if it means remembering my brother and praising His name.”

Rafael was transfixed listening to Anna talk about her faith this way. It was not lost on him that the same day that he told her about his grandmother—something he’d kept from her, even after all this time—was the same day that he learned how important her religion really was to her. He sat down on the bed and patted the space next to him, beckoning her. She sat down and he took her hand and kissed it.

“I just want you to know how much I appreciate you bringing me there today. I know that it wasn’t easy for you to do that.”

“It wasn’t,” she agreed. “Until you shared my pain.”

* * *

Oddly enough, Rafael had never been inside a synagogue. He had certainly seen his fair share of them, living in New York City. But Temple Emanuel Beverly Hills was without a doubt far more modern-looking. Despite being the first religious building designed by Sidney Eisenshtat in 1953, Anna told him that it had won a National Design Award in 2012 for a redesign project that included a design motif of circles, reflective of life cycles and seasonality. The sanctuary where the service was to be held was unlike anything he had ever seen in a house of worship. There were no pews, but rather, chairs arranged to face a raised stage, at the back of which sat an enclosed space that housed Torah scrolls. The tall, thin stained-glass windows in the brick walls let in natural light, as did a giant, circular skylight in the ceiling. Smaller lights dotted the area around the skylight, which made it look more like a starry sky around a moon than the ceiling to a room.

Anna’s parents had saved them seats in the sanctuary, as the two of them had come directly from work. Miriam waved them over as they were greeted by ushers, who handed them each a prayer book. “Shabbat shalom,” Anna said to them, and then leaned over to Rafael. “Means ‘a peaceful Sabbath.’ Standard issue greeting.”

He was, as he had said, happy to attend with her, but he wished she had given him more time to be able to research the subject. He hated doing anything without adequate preparation, a holdover from the terror of the Socratic method in law school. That said, he knew she would explain anything he didn’t understand, and at least the prayer books included English translations so he could follow along.

“Glad you two made it,” Miriam said as they sat down.

“Shabbat shalom,” Rafael replied, and Anna raised her eyebrows. He smirked, very pleased with himself. “What? I’m a fast learner.”

The cantor’s soft singing faded out as the rabbi, a tall, bald man with what Anna referred to as a “soul patch” stepped onto the stage. “Rabbi Jonathan,” she said. “He did my bat mitzvah. I’m surprised he’s still here.”

“We wish to welcome you as we also welcome Shabbat,” Rabbi Jonathan said with a smile. “We are so glad you have come to join us, to take time from your busy lives to reflect, pray, and be. We rise together as we light the candles. Page four.”

Rafael opened his prayer book, and, of course, did it backwards—he forgot that Hebrew books opened from left to right instead of right to left—but found the page easily once he corrected his error. The rabbi read the prayer for the lighting of the Shabbat candles. “ _Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam, asher kidishanu b'mitz'votav, v'tzivanu l'had'lik neir shel Shabbat._ ”

Meanwhile, Joseph realized that despite Rafael’s greeting to them, his daughter’s Catholic boyfriend was probably pretty lost. He also suspected that Anna hadn’t told Rafael about attending services before that morning. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Half of us don’t know what’s going on, either.” That made Rafael feel much more at ease.

When the long taper candles were lit, they sat again, and the service began. Throughout it, Joseph whispered short explanations of what was going on, from the song L’Cha Dodi, where they turned to the sanctuary doors (“to welcome the Sabbath bride”) to the Bar’chu (“the call to prayer”) to the Amidah (which was a series of blessings recited while standing). Similarly to the Catholic services Rafael attended as a child—and still occasionally did on holidays—there was a good deal of standing and sitting involved. Since he didn’t speak the language, he opted to read the prayers’ translations, which were, thankfully, printed underneath the Hebrew and transliterated versions. For once, he realized, he was the one who had to have the English version to understand. In contrast to those he learned as a boy, these prayers were written plainly, almost as though they were poems. All the while, he listened to Anna’s Hebrew to his right, finding it almost hypnotic.

One prayer, however, caught his attention. It was called “Mi Chamocha,” and it was actually sung rather than recited. That wasn’t what got his mind reeling, though. It was a line that read, “And thus it is said, ‘Adonai redeemed Jacob, from a hand stronger than his own.’” Of course, the verse referred to the Biblical figure who was saved by God from those who sought to destroy him. But Rafael was thinking of the man who would have been his brother-in-law, and who had hopefully found in death the redemption and safety he couldn’t find in life.

Close to the end of the service, after a prayer for healing and temple announcements, Rabbi Jonathan cleared his throat. “We now turn to page 492, for the Mourner’s Kaddish.”

Joseph leaned over again. “This is the prayer for—”

“The dead,” Rafael finished, before he could stop himself. Joseph tilted his head in surprise but said nothing.

Instead of launching directly into the prayer, the rabbi stood at the lectern. “We remember,” he said, “those who have died in the last week, the period of Shiva _,_ Rebekah Solomon, and in the period of yahrzeit _,_ during this season in years past.” And then, he began to read from a list—all the members of the synagogue who had died that week, years ago. The list was long, but each name was given the same amount of reverence as the others. “We also say Kaddish for those who have no one to say Kaddish for them, and for the six million people who perished in the Shoah.” Rafael didn’t need a translation to know what the Shoah was.

The cantor stepped to the lectern then. “We now invite you to lift up the names of anyone who was not included on this list, for anyone you are remembering or mourning during this time.”

She moved her hand slowly across the room, and names floated through the temple from other members. Most of the surnames sounded Jewish, but many didn’t. _Benton. Landers. Naismith._ He wondered if they had converted or married into non-Jewish families. And then, for absolutely no discernible reason, he found himself wondering whether anyone ever remembered his father. Enrique Barba hadn’t done many things to make him worth remembering, but his life wasn’t meaningless. After all, if nothing else, he’d given Rafael life. And then, maybe only because he was in a place of worship, Rafael wondered if anyone had ever _prayed_ for his father. He certainly hadn’t, but now, surrounded by people remembering their loved ones, he almost felt like he should. His thoughts were interrupted, though, when he heard Anna’s voice, clear and loud.

“Catalina Diaz.”

His breath hitched in his chest and he stared down at her. She didn’t look back at him, but he knew she knew his eyes were on her. He hadn’t expected her to do that, not in the least, and was so overcome with emotion that he didn’t even realize what he was saying until he said it.

“Jacob Stein.”

He didn’t know whether what he’d just done was appropriate. But he had learned so much about Jake—the name Anna had used when she “introduced” them—that he felt that Anna shouldn’t be the only one to remember him out loud. Wordlessly, she slipped her hand into his, an acknowledgment of her love and appreciation for his gesture. Suddenly, he remembered what she had said about her parents still hurting from her brother’s death. Although Anna was clearly thankful, he worried that he might have upset them.

Then, he felt Joseph softly pat him on the upper back, followed by two simple words. “Thank you.”

As the congregation began to recite the Mourner’s Kaddish, he understood the name, and why Anna said it wasn’t generally recited by oneself. The chant was sorrowful, almost eerie, and made more powerful by the number of people reciting it.

“ _Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei b’chayeichon uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit Yisrael, ba’agala uvizman kariv, v’im’ru: amen…_ ”

The prayer echoed throughout the chamber, and despite not knowing a word of Hebrew, Rafael felt its impact deep in his heart, where his _abuelita_ lived on.

* * *

A short while later, the four of them were standing just outside the synagogue doors, saying their goodnights before Anna and Rafael headed off to dinner.

“What time will you be home?” Miriam asked Anna after they hugged. “Not that I’m keeping track, of course.”

“Oh, probably not til late. We’re going to go downtown. We have a reservation at Faith & Flower.”

“Oh, your father and I just went there a month or so ago!” Miriam exclaimed. “It was wonderful. Get the mushroom ravioli. You won’t regret it.”

“Awesome.”

Miriam turned toward Rafael. “It was so wonderful to have you join us. I hope it wasn’t too boring.”

“Not at all. Joseph was very helpful.”

Anna’s father gave Rafael a small smile. “My best friend growing up was Catholic. I went to Mass with him once and was totally lost. Only real similarity was—”

“All the sitting and standing?” Rafael suggested.

Joseph laughed. “Glad I’m not the only one.” He extended his hand to shake Rafael’s, and Rafael returned the gesture.

As Anna said goodnight to her father, Miriam turned to Rafael again and embraced him. He was glad for that, as he had no idea how she had felt about him saying Jake’s name out loud; at least Joseph had been able to react in the moment. The hug she gave him was tighter this time, and when she pulled away, she put her hand to his cheek, tapping it lightly twice.

“You’re a good man,” she said. Then, she added, quietly enough so that only Rafael would hear, “Jake would have liked you.”

Once upon a time, Rafael had savored the limelight and appreciated the fact that he had a reputation as a tough, brilliant prosecutor. Newspapers sung his praises. Victims thanked him after he won their cases as if he was their savior. Plenty of people had told him that he was a good man. But for Anna’s mother to say that her beloved son would have liked him was one of the most meaningful compliments Rafael could have received, even if—maybe even _because_ —no one else heard it.


	6. Confessions and Centers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael and Anna's vacation is coming to an end, and Rafael has been carrying secrets around with him -- quite literally. Before the trip is over, he'll confess them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #189 from 200 Prompts from @drink-it-write-it on Tumblr (”You have my heart. I don’t think I could get it back even if I wanted to.”) 
> 
> The bar exam was BRUTAL AF, and the depression that followed was real. But I found the energy and the inspiration to finish this chapter. It went a few places i didn’t think it would, but I wanted to deepen the relationship between Rafael and Anna’s family, and I hope I accomplished that in a real way. Also, this is the final segment of Anna and Rafael’s trip to Los Angeles, and I wanted to end it with fireworks. I hope this makes someone’s day a little brighter, and I hope it’s everything you guys want it to be.
> 
> Song: "Girl in L.A." by Us the Duo

Anna was already up and showered when Rafael awoke the next morning. When he opened his eyes, he saw her standing just outside the closet, wearing nothing but a white lace bra and low-slung jeans. He turned onto his side and watched her shift her weight from one leg to another as she tried to decide what to wear. Her hair was still damp and loose, although he knew before she left it would be in a braid. Finally, she reached in and grabbed a sky-blue tunic with sleeves that tied at the shoulders. After she slipped it over her head, she turned back around and smiled at him. “It’s not polite to stare."

“Can’t help it. The view is too nice.”

She came over and sat on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“Not at all.” He sat up took her hand. “I need to get up anyway. I’m supposed to Skype with Liv this morning.”

“Stuff for when you’re back?”

“Hardly. Just a quick catch-up. Call it a long-distance sidebar.”

She smiled, selfishly pleased to hear that he was still not working. “Tell her I said hello?”

“Of course,” he said. “Any idea when you’ll be home? Not that I’m trying to rush you.”

“Um, maybe around four o’clock?” She said it in a way that sounded like she was asking his permission.

He cocked his head. “Seriously, Anna, spend all the time you want. I get you every day. You only see your mom once every couple of years.”

She relaxed visibly. “Thank you, _mi amor_.” It always sent goosebumps down his arms when she called him that. He wasn’t quite sure why, but maybe it had to do with her making an effort to relate to his culture—kind of the way she loved it when he occasionally called her “sweetheart.”

She leaned in, intending to give him a quick peck on the lips, but he wrapped his fingers through her hair and deepened the kiss, his tongue slipping over hers. She melted into him instantly, unable to resist him when he kissed her that way. Even if he knew he wasn’t going to get anything else, he still insisted on showing her physical affection in whatever way he could. That made her love him all the more. She gently pushed him back onto the pillow.

“Okay, _Guapo,_ ” she said _._ “I need to get going. I love you very much.”

“ _Te amo, mi amor_.” With that, Anna rose from the bed and left the room, blowing him another kiss on the way out. A few seconds later, he heard the door slam and the key turn in the lock.

He could smell the coffee from the bedroom. He needed to shower, but he needed caffeine more. When he got to the kitchen, a smile spread across his face. Next to the coffee pot, he found a mug with a teaspoon of honey and a pinch of cinnamon in it, under which was a note, obviously written before she’d said goodbye.

> _Dear “manfriend” of mine,_
> 
> _The coffee’s hot and strong. Just like you. Thank you for giving me the best vacation I’ve ever had._
> 
> _Te amo, mi amor,_
> 
> _Anna_

* * *

An hour after Anna left, Rafael had made his way to the balcony, a second cup of coffee in hand, Skyping with Olivia. It was the first time he had spoken to anyone back home all week, and it was also the longest he and Olivia had gone without contacting one another since they met. She had wanted to give him space to enjoy his first vacation with Anna, but she was glad to have a chance to catch up.

“You look relaxed!” 

“I _feel_ relaxed,” he said. “For the first time in a long time, actually.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so…casual.”

He looked down at his white linen short sleeved shirt and khaki shorts. “I’m starting to forget what a suit feels like. How’s everything with you?”

She sighed. “When are you back from suspension?”

“About two more weeks,” he said suspiciously. “Is that related to my question somehow?”

“Let’s just say that the guy who took over your cases is not nearly so pleasant to deal with.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Wow. If I’m considered pleasant to deal with, things must be pretty bad.”

She laughed. “Enough about the squad. How’s California?”

“Liv, I gotta be honest. I know everyone always makes fun of Los Angeles, but I can kind of see the appeal.” He sipped his coffee, which he’d made the same way Anna made it for him. “Aside from the traffic, I haven’t seen much of a downside.”

“Have you been able to see Nick?”

Detective Nick Amaro had been Olivia’s, then Amanda’s, partner for years, until he moved to California to be closer to his two kids. The two men had never seen eye-to-eye, but over the years, each of them had warmed to the other.

“Unfortunately not. He’s in San Diego this week. His son’s having his tonsils out and Cynthia has to work, so Nick’s taking care of him.”

“That’s too bad,” Olivia said. “So, you’re staying with Anna’s parents, right?”

“Yep. They have a _guest house_ behind their _mansion_ in Hollywood Hills.” He flipped his iPad around so she could see the main house. He heard her say the word ‘damn’ and turned the iPad back. “I told you.”

“What are they, plastic surgeons?” she joked. When Rafael hesitated, she raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

He shook his head. “Her father is, but he told me that ninety percent of his practice is for deviated septums and scar revisions.”

“What about her mother?”

“She’s a cardiothoracic surgeon. Apparently, they were high school sweethearts and attended medical school together, even after they had Anna and—” He cut himself off, remembering that no one else knew about Anna’s brother.

“And?”

Thankfully, he was quick on his feet. “And could barely afford the apartment they lived in.”

Olivia gave him a teasing smile. “Do they like you?”

He shrugged. “She says they do. After temple last night—”

“You went to a synagogue?” Her eyebrows shot up. “How’d that go?”

He laughed. “What, you think I radiate Catholic vibes?”

“It’s not that. I just can’t imagine you being the only person in the room who doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“Well, actually, Anna’s father kept me in the loop throughout the service,” he replied. “Besides, it’s not like most Catholics know what’s going on in our own services, either. We’re all just following that one little old lady in the front row.”

She smiled, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “So, other than working toward religious unity, what else have you been doing?”

“A lot of things, very few of them touristy. Of course, I’ve been a walking potential robbery victim the whole time.”

“You live in a tourist town!” She laughed and took a sip of her coffee. “It’s not like you don’t know how to handle yourself.”

“Yeah, but I don’t usually walk around with a ring in my—”

He stopped short, realizing what he’d just said, and hoping Olivia hadn’t heard him. Unfortunately, the look on her face coupled with the coughing fit from her inhaling her coffee proved otherwise.

“Excuse me, you’re walking around with _what_?” she finally managed.

There was no getting around it now, he realized. Olivia’s bullshit detector was too good. “Okay,” he said, lowering his voice on the off-chance Anna walked through the door. “Okay, you got me. I’ve been walking around with an engagement ring in my pocket most of the trip, trying to figure out the right time.”

“Wow, Rafa. When did you decide to do this?”

His brow furrowed and he suddenly felt very defensive. “What, do you not think we’ve been together long enough?”

She shook her head emphatically. “Of course not, no! I’m thrilled for you. I guess I just—I never envisioned you married, that’s all.”

“I didn’t either, I guess. Until, you know…” He studied what was left of his coffee, but Olivia knew that avoiding eye contact was a telltale sign he was holding something back.

“Rafa?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“What makes you think something’s—”

She pursed her lips for a second. “Don’t even try. What’s going through your mind?”

He sighed. “I guess I’m worried _she’s_ going to think it’s too soon. Or maybe she doesn’t see herself married.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Have you talked to her about whether she wants marriage someday?”

He nodded. “Of course. And she said she does. I guess I should rephrase. What if she doesn’t see herself married to _me_?”

“Oh, Rafael,” she sighed. “Do you _really_ think that after all this time, she would say no?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “You said no to Tucker.”

Her head dropped momentarily, and a piece of her hair fell out of the loose bun on top of her head. She looked back up and pushed it out of her eyes. “That’s because I wasn’t ready to retire, and he was. It had nothing to do with wanting or not wanting to marry him.”

“I don’t know, Liv, I—”

“I don’t think you’re really afraid that she’ll say no. So what is it?”

He hated how good she was at her job sometimes. “I’m afraid she’ll say yes.”

That caught her off guard. “Then why—”

“I want to marry her,” he said, eyes clouded by worry. “In fact, I can’t think of anything I’ve wanted more in my life. But…” He took a deep breath. “It’s not like my parents’ marriage set a great example for me. None of my friends have had happy marriages, or _any_ marriage. What if I don’t know how to be a good husband?”

Olivia’s face softened as she tilted her head, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Rafael, I have news for you. You’ve been a good husband since the day you told Anna you loved her. You just don’t have the piece of paper that says so.” He half-grinned, a positive sign as far as she was concerned. “So,” she said, “you have today and tomorrow left. What’s your plan?”

He polished off the remainder of his coffee. “Like I said, I don’t really have a plan. I’ve been waiting for the right time, but it hasn’t seemed to come up.”

“Have you talked to her parents yet?”

He hesitated. “It never occurred to me to do that. She’s a grown woman, after all.”

“I didn’t say you should _ask_ them. I said you should talk to them.”

It was at that moment that Rafael heard a voice calling to him from below. It was Joseph, standing in the backyard, beneath the guest house balcony. “Hang on, Liv.”

“Sure.”

Rafael set the iPad down and went to the railing. “Morning,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“Morning,” Joseph replied. “Sorry, I knocked, but nobody answered. Then I heard you out here.”

“I think Anna locked it on her way out. Force of habit, living in New York.”

Joseph laughed. “I’ll make this quick so the neighbors don’t start thinking I’m the crazy old man yelling at the lawn gnomes,” he said. “I’ve got to go pick up some stuff at the farmer’s market, and I was wondering if you might want to go along and grab a bite after.”

His mind reeled. “Uh, yeah, sure. Can you give me ten or fifteen minutes?”

“Of course. Just come on into the house when you’re set. I’ll be in the kitchen, eating my daughter’s cereal.”

Rafael snorted and watched Joseph walk back to the house. Then he picked up the tablet again. Olivia was staring at a file on her desk. He cleared his throat.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “but we’re gonna have to cut this short. Anna’s dad just asked if I wanted to go to the farmer’s market and then lunch with him.”

She raised an eyebrow. Sometimes, he thought when she did that, it was involuntary. “Oh yeah? How do you feel about that?”

He shrugged. “I mean, we get along. But I’m not sure what we’re going to have to talk about.”

A knowing smile spread across her face. “Well,” she said, “I can think of something.”

* * *

As it turned out, the farmer’s market Joseph had mentioned was actually a permanent installation that was open seven days a week. He explained to Rafael that it had been open for over eighty years and had over one hundred vendors, which is why he and Miriam went there when they needed fresh produce, meat, or spices.

“We don’t cook at home much, to be honest,” he said as they walked from the car into the market. “We both took the week off because you two were coming out here, but we’re usually too busy at work to even be home at the same time. I imagine it’s the same in your line of work?”

Rafael nodded. “It is. I try to be home at a reasonable hour, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Between my work schedule and Anna’s classes, it’s hard for us to eat together too. We did agree to a weekly date night, though, which almost always includes food.”

“Does she do more of the cooking or do you?”

Rafael glanced at Joseph. “What’s the right answer?”

Joseph laughed surprisingly loudly, given his generally reserved demeanor. His laugh reminded Rafael of Anna’s, though—full, unrestrained, and directly from her heart. “There’s no right answer. I’m just curious.”

“It depends on what we’re in the mood for. I’m not good for much other than what I learned from my mother and grandmother. She’s much more versatile.”

“Wow,” Joseph replied, a tone of surprise in his voice. “Well, that would explain it.”

“Explain what?”

“Anna never cooked much when she lived out here.” As they approached the market, Joseph tucked his sunglasses into his shirt pocket and replaced them with his regular eyeglasses. “But since January, she’s been emailing her mother asking for recipes.” Rafael’s eyebrows launched toward the sky. Was Joseph really telling him that Anna only started cooking because they moved in together?

They stepped into the market’s main area, and the first thing Rafael noticed was the brightness of the produce sold by multiple vendors. There were also several stalls selling chicken, steak, and pork—Rafael assumed the vendors selling pork wouldn’t be on the list of stops—and a handful of others with spices, prepared foods, and chocolate. “So what _are_ we here to get anyway?” he asked.

Joseph checked the list he’d made on his phone. “I need to get chicken thighs, some good olive oil, a jar of turmeric, and a few things from produce.” He glanced up. “If you want to wander around while I do that, I’ll just text you when I’m done, and we can meet back up. Then we can get a bite to eat.”

“That sounds good.” Then, he hesitated, not wanting to be rude. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

Joseph nodded and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I’m sure. I’m capable of doing the grocery shopping without supervision, despite what my wife might believe.”

Rafael felt his face burn. “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

Joseph smiled. “I’m kidding.” He put a hand on Rafael’s shoulder. “Although, I’m at least glad I have the ability to scare my daughter’s boyfriend. Something you’ll appreciate if you ever have a daughter.”

That caught Rafael slightly off guard. The idea of having kids had only recently become something he thought he might want. So it was still occasionally weird to imagine it as a reality. “Okay,” he said, clearing his throat. “How long do you think you’ll need?”

“Oh, probably about half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes if there’s a line at Marconda’s, which there usually is. If you need me, that’s probably where I’ll be.” He pointed down the way, and Rafael could see the sign in the distance.

“Okay. Do you have my number?”

“I’ve had it since you got here,” Joseph replied, looking somewhat sheepish.

Rafael smiled and shook his head. “She’s always worried her phone is going to die suddenly.”

“Always has been.” Joseph checked his watch. “Okay, I’ll text you when I’m done. If you don’t hear from me in forty-five minutes, send help.”

Rafael’s eyes twinkled slightly. “Well, I have cops on speed dial, but it might take them a minute to get here.”

Joseph laughed. “I’ll see you in a bit.” He patted Rafael on the shoulder and headed toward the produce. Rafael watched him go and realized that was beginning to feel much more comfortable around Joseph, especially now that he knew Anna and her father had the same sense of humor.

As they had agreed, while Joseph shopped, Rafael wandered around for a bit, just taking in his surroundings, enjoying the scents from the butcher shops and bakeries. He found a chocolate shop where he’d purchased a box of peanut butter squares for Olivia and Noah. He also found a handmade, rose-gold Crucifix necklace for his mother at a jewelry store owned by a married couple. Half an hour later, he found himself standing in a candle store, just killing time until Joseph texted him. He wasn’t even quite sure why he went in; there were approximately four thousand candles in their apartment already. Anna had a slight addiction to them. She was very particular about them, though—she only bought clean-burning wax, and she liked fresh scents over food-based ones. It was her only real vice, so he indulged her happily. Besides, who was he to judge? He had dozens of types of coffee in the pantry, after all.

He was staring at a shelf full of wax melts when something caught his eye on the wooden set of wall shelves next to him. There were large, glass containers like you’d put flour and sugar in, but these held candles that looked like a slightly flattened egg. He glanced at the sign in the middle of the shelf. _Floating Candles,_ it read. Candles you could put in water—that was something Anna didn’t have, and something he thought she would like.

It was at that moment that Joseph walked by the store. He almost missed Rafael, but he happened to get a glimpse of a lilac button down with the sleeves rolled up and knew exactly who it was. He shifted the grocery bags he was carrying and headed into the store, but before Rafael saw him, he stopped short. Rafael was looking at a number of glass jars, head tilted slightly, two fingers pressed to his lips as if he were carefully considering something. Then, he picked up one of the paper bags intended for bagging the candles and opened a jar. He put a dozen of them into the bag and rolled it closed, a small smile on his face.

Between the color of the candles—and the scent he knew came with them—and the look on Rafael’s face, Joseph knew who they were for. And something about this small gesture made him smile. Anna had been a strong, independent child, who grew into a strong, independent woman. That, undoubtedly, had helped her get through what she had. But seeing her with Rafael that week, it was evident that he had helped through the other side of her assault as well. As a father, it made him glad to know that even when they were apart, Rafael still thought of his daughter. So although Joseph knew that she didn’t need anyone to take care of her, he was glad to know she’d found someone who would be happy to.

* * *

“I can’t believe Anna hasn’t taken you here yet,” Joseph remarked as he and Rafael sat down in a booth at Canter’s Deli. It was just down the street from the Farmer’s Market, and was nearly one hundred years old, a landmark in the Los Angeles Jewish community.

“Well, for what it’s worth, she’s taken me to plenty of other great places,” Rafael replied. “It’s a good excuse for us to come back to visit.”

“That’s a good way of looking at it. It also means I get the honor.”

The waitress came over and took their drink orders—Rafael ordering his third cup of coffee, while Joseph got a Bloody Mary. “Planning on sleeping tonight?” Joseph asked.

Rafael laughed. “This is actually an accomplishment for me. Usually by noon, I’m on my fifth or sixth.”

“Boy, and I thought I was bad. Miriam and I were halfway through med school when the kids were born. Jacob was a little over a year when Anna came along.” He looked down at his menu with a wistful look. “I drank a _lot_ of very black, very strong coffee in those days.”

The waitress returned with their drinks. “All set to order, or do you need a few minutes?” she asked, smiling at Rafael.

“Oh, sorry. Could we have just a minute?” Joseph asked.

“Sure hon. I’ll be back in a few.”

After she’d walked away, Rafael smirked. “Anna and I do the same thing. It always takes the server coming back twice before we manage to order.”

“Sounds about right. Can I recommend something?”

“Absolutely.”

“Hot corned beef on challah with potato salad. It’s what they’re famous for.”

“Done,” Rafael said, closing his menu. “Although I’m not sure if anything can compete with the brisket Miriam made when Anna and I first got here.”

“She’d be glad to hear that. To be honest, she was a wreck that whole day.”

“Why’s that?”

Joseph shrugged. “She was worried you wouldn’t like us.”

Rafael’s eyebrows shot toward the ceiling. “What? Why wouldn’t I?”

“She always thought that the reason Anna never brought any of her boyfriends home was because of us,” he replied. “She thought Anna thought they’d be uncomfortable because of how we live.”

Rafael could understand Miriam’s line of thinking, but he knew it wasn’t why Anna had never introduced them to men she dated. He had asked her on the first night of their visit, after she’d confessed to him that he was the first. She had said it was because she had never dated anyone who she felt was worth bringing home. The way she had put it, she knew, despite how much she might have liked the men she had dated, they weren’t serious relationships.

“Well, I can tell you without a doubt that the last thing I’ve been is uncomfortable.”

The waitress returned to the table. “Round two.” She smiled, again toward Rafael.

“Two corned beef on challah, one potato salad, one sauerkraut, two pickles,” Joseph replied, fully aware that the server was more focused on Rafael than their order. She wrote it down, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she brought out two latke platters instead. Once she was gone, Joseph glanced at Rafael. “That happen often?”

“Sorry?”

Joseph gestured toward the kitchen. “That waitress barely acknowledged my existence.”

“Oh,” Rafael said, “it’s—I have no idea. If women did notice me in the past, I never paid attention. Even with Anna—” He hesitated, unsure of whether he should complete the thought.

“Go ahead,” Joseph said, as if he could read Rafael’s mind. “Even with Anna what?”

Rafael stared into his coffee. “Even with Anna, I had absolutely no idea that she had feelings for me until she showed up at my apartment and told me as much.”

Joseph had to laugh at that. “Sounds exactly right. She’s never been shy about telling people exactly how she feels.”

“We’re very alike in that way,” Rafael said. “But she’s far more perceptive. It’ll serve her well as an attorney. Speaking of that,” he continued, “I have to ask, what was your reaction when she told you she wanted to go to law school?”

Joseph’s deep brown eyes glittered behind his glasses. “Well, we were obviously surprised, but when she explained her reasoning, it made sense.”

“Believe me, when she came by my office, I was shocked as hell,” Rafael said. “But one thing I’ve learned about Anna is that when she wants to do something, she’s going to do it, even if it means telling a stubborn, sarcastic attorney exactly what he can do with his opinions.”

Joseph finished off his drink and set it aside. “You want to know something funny?”

“Sure.”

But before Joseph could reply, a food runner delivered their lunch. After he took a bite, Rafael understood why Joseph had recommended the corned beef. It was delicious. If nothing else, he concluded, at least food was something Jews and Cubans had in common.

“When Anna was maybe six or so,” Joseph finally said, between bites, “she wanted to be a lawyer.”

Rafael almost choked on his potato salad. “Really? She never told me that.”

“She probably doesn’t remember. One of my sisters is a judge, but when Anna was little, she was a public defender, and Anna decided she wanted to be like her Aunt Liz. I specifically remember her lining up her stuffed animals and telling them to let Ken go home to Barbie.”

Rafael started laughing at the image this story conjured, of a tiny blonde girl in pigtails, directing a bunch of Care Bears to find Ken not guilty of whatever a plastic doll could be charged with—maybe Ken stabbed G.I. Joe after finding out Barbie was sleeping with him?

“That’s really something,” he said. “I didn’t know I wanted to do this job until I was knee deep in college term papers. To be honest, sometimes I still don’t know if I want to do it.”

There was something in Rafael’s voice that told Joseph he was holding something back. “What made you want to do it in the first place?”

Rafael set his fork down and wiped his hands on the napkin in his lap. “I guess it was watching so many of my friends—kids in my neighborhood—grow up and become, well, criminals.” He shrugged. “I knew I wanted to do something that would mean something. I wanted to change the world, like most law students. But eventually I guess you kind of lose that desire in favor of practicality or necessity.”

“So what keeps you in it? Why keep doing it if you’re not happy?”

Rafael considered his answer carefully. “Well,” he finally said, “I don’t think I’m _unhappy_ exactly. I think it’s just that after a while I started wondering if I really was doing anything meaningful.”

Joseph took his glasses off. “I think,” he said, “that everyone, at one time or another, has those feelings about themselves, whether it’s job related or something else. We get tired or jaded or screw something up and wonder why we bother.”

Rafael cocked an eyebrow. “You sound like you speak from experience.”

Inhaling deeply, Joseph folded his hands on the table. “Anna doesn’t even know this,” he began, “but about ten years ago, I had a patient who came to see me for breast implants. Not unusual in this town, clearly.”

“You don’t say.”

“Shocking, I know,” Joseph deadpanned. “Anyway, she seemed slightly apprehensive about the whole thing, but she passed the mental eval we give before surgery, so we scheduled the operation.” He took another deep breath. “A couple weeks later, she threw a clot. There was no warning, no indication that anything was wrong until it happened. They did everything they could, but the clot moved too quickly, and by the time they got her into the O.R., she was gone.”

“ _Dios Mio_. How awful.”

“That isn’t the worst part.” Joseph sounded like he had played this over and over in his head. “The worst part was that during the investigation—there’s always an investigation when something like that happens—it somehow came out that it was her boyfriend pushing the idea.”

“That is both disgusting and unsurprising.”

“Agreed. And, as I said, the investigation determined there was no malpractice. Sometimes it just happens. But I couldn’t help feeling responsible.”

Rafael hadn’t known Anna’s father very long, but he sensed Joseph was a man who, like Rafael himself, was used to having the utmost confidence in his professional abilities. So he imagined it must have been extraordinarily difficult to lose a patient. “Well, it doesn’t sound like you could have done anything,” he said. “You said yourself that it happened really quickly.”

Joseph shook his head and Rafael noticed he was squeezing his hands together. “I know that I couldn’t have fixed the clot,” he said, “but in all her pre-op consultations, I could sense how concerned she was, how nervous. I thought it was just the usual pre-surgery jitters. But I wonder if I shouldn’t have asked more questions, been more observant. If I’d caught onto the idea that it was her boyfriend pushing the surgery instead of a choice she was making, I wouldn’t have performed the surgery at all. And I would have tried to talk her out of finding someone else to do it.”

Rafael was silent, listening intently to this confession. He wondered who else Joseph had told; if Anna didn’t know, there couldn’t have been many people who did.

“Anyway,” Joseph continued, “for a few months, I thought maybe I wasn’t cut out for—I mean, I felt complicit. I lost faith in my ability to do my job, and believe me, if you’re a surgeon who doubts his abilities, you shouldn’t be practicing medicine.”

“I know all about feeling complicit,” Rafael said, before he could stop himself. When he realized what he’d said, his heart dropped into his stomach.

Joseph raised an eyebrow. “Care to share?”

He could have played it off as mere sympathy. He could have pretended it had to do with losing a case. But something about the way Joseph was looking at him made Rafael feel like lying was a useless endeavor; after all, Anna was Joseph’s daughter, and she always saw through his bullshit. He took a deep breath. “There’s a reason Anna and I took this trip when we did…”

And, just as he had done with Anna earlier that month, Rafael told her father about the Abreus and the heroin and the blackmail and the suspension. As he talked, he did his best to make eye contact with Joseph, but it wasn’t at all easy. He felt exposed, like a raw nerve, even though Joseph had done nothing to make him feel that way. As he told the story, Joseph’s eyes remained soft, not a hint of judgment in them. Eventually, Rafael realized that the only person judging him was, in fact, him. “And that’s how we ended up here,” he finished.

Joseph was silent for a moment, taking his time processing and considering his words carefully. Then he put his glasses back on and ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. It occurred to Rafael how odd it was telling this story to a man who looked like Jack McCoy, when Jack McCoy was the person who had suspended him in the first place.

“I assume Anna knows about this?”

Rafael nodded. “I told her the day it happened.”

“And how did she respond?”

“Not the way I expected. I mean, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d been furious. But she was remarkably understanding.”

“I’m not surprised. I assume she told you about our family’s history with drug addiction.”

Rafael swallowed hard. “She did.”

Joseph let out a deep sigh. “We made a lot of mistakes with our son. And, truth be told, I don’t know if cutting him off was the right response, either.”

It looked to Rafael like he wanted to say something else but was holding back. “Please, whatever it is, say it.”

Joseph smiled weakly. “I know you’re Catholic, and so this might not mean much, but…on Yom Kippur, Jews atone for their sins against God. But between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews atone for their sins against others. We believe God can’t forgive our sins against others, so we must seek forgiveness from those we’ve harmed, and do what we can to atone for those sins. And it seems to me that you’ve done what you can to mend the harm. And,” he added, “for whatever it’s worth, speaking from personal experience, Ms. Abreu made her choice, just as my patient did, and just as my son did. Whether or not you contributed to it, it was, ultimately, her decision.”

Rafael laughed quietly. “You’ll probably be unsurprised to hear that Anna said something very similar to me when we talked about this.”

“Anna took it hard when Jake died. It took her a long time to realize it wasn’t her fault, or ours. He made his choices, and as painful as it is to accept that, it’s the truth,” Joseph said. “Look, Rafael, I know we’ve only known each other for a short time, and I know that you’ve got your own father—”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Okay,” Joseph said. “I never used to be a protective dad. At least, I wasn’t by most people’s standards. But after Anna got”—he cleared his throat—“hurt, I guess I got worried that it would affect her forever. I worried that she wouldn’t be able to have the things I know she wanted because of what that bastard did to her.”

“Unfortunately, your fears weren’t misplaced. But she defied the odds.”

Joseph smiled. “That she did. But my point is, guys like that—the ones who hurt others for absolutely no reason—those are the real bad guys. You and I have made mistakes, but at the end of the day, our hearts weren’t full of hate or selfish ambition. The results may have been unfortunate, devastating even. But our hearts were in the right place. I think that’s what matters.”

Joseph’s kindness and understanding were reminiscent of Anna’s, but what really made Rafael appreciate Anna’s father was that he shared his own self-doubt without any reason to, other than because he trusted Rafael.

“Thank you,” Rafael said. “I just wish I hadn’t had to tell you this story. I wish there weren’t a story to tell.”

“Well, if it means anything, your suspension doesn’t matter one bit to me. I only care about two things.”

Rafael raised an eyebrow. “And those are?”

“Well, first, that you care about my daughter and treat her well. I’ve got no issue there.”

“And second?”

Joseph picked his sandwich back up. “And second, what your opinion of the corned beef is.”

A wide smile crossed Rafael’s face as he picked his own sandwich back up. “This has been one of the best lunches of my life,” he said, and he meant it in more ways than one.

* * *

As it turned out, the ingredients Joseph had picked up that afternoon had been for one of Rafael’s favorite meals, _arroz con pollo_. Miriam had called his mother again and asked for another recipe, which Lucia was all too happy to provide. Joseph had done the cooking, though, and it turned out just as good as if Lucia had made it herself. For dessert, Anna had tried her hand at _arroz con leche_ since they had leftover rice. It wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever made, but she wasn’t impressed with her endeavor, and made a mental note to ask Lucia how to do better next time.

That afternoon, while Rafael and Joseph devoured their lunch, Anna and Miriam had perused the shops on Melrose Avenue. It was true that New York had some of the best shopping in the world, but Anna much preferred the boutiques lining the nineties-famous street at the juncture of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. Plus, shopping on Melrose came with the added bonus of spending time with her mother, who was a sucker for vintage handbags.

“I still can’t believe I let you talk me into that purse,” Miriam said over the last of her wine. “Where the hell am I going to use a sequined, beaded flapper clutch?”

“All the speakeasies we go to, clearly,” Joseph laughed. Miriam smacked him in the arm.

“You have a great gold dress that you could wear with it! I saw it hanging in your closet earlier today,” Anna replied.

Miriam raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “And what were you doing in my closet?”

“I was waiting for you to finish putting on your makeup this morning,” Anna said. “I almost stole it.”

Rafael laughed. “You don’t think she would have noticed?”

“Oh, she’s been stealing my clothes since she was a teenager,” Miriam said to him. “Why should she stop now?”

Anna’s eyes widened. “I’ve never stolen—”

“Don’t think I don’t know where those sunglasses came from.” Miriam gestured to the black Chanel sunglasses that were still perched on top of Anna’s head. “I thought I was losing my mind for the last four years, thank you very much.”

Anna grinned. “It’s not my fault they look better on me.”

“You’re twenty-six years old. _Everything_ looks better on you.”

Joseph shook his head and squeezed his wife’s shoulder. “I’m not trying to get in the middle of this argument, but I’d beg to differ.”

Rafael and Anna glanced at each other, each of them smiling for their own reasons. For Anna, it was because she was happy to see her parents’ affection for one another; the statistics about divorce after the loss of a child had stuck in the middle of her heart after her brother’s death. She was worried that her parents would become another of them.

For Rafael, the reason was nearly as personal, but in a distinctly different way. His parents had been high school sweethearts, the same as Miriam and Joseph, but had ended up in an entirely different sort of marriage. He hadn’t had the benefit of seeing them when they were happy, so sometimes, he felt almost insecure about his and Anna’s relationship; like because he was the product of an unhappy relationship, he shouldn’t know how to be in a happy one. But seeing Anna’s parents together made him realize that what he had told Anna about soulmates was truer than even he had realized. Despite everything they’d gone through, her parents were still together because they chose to be. And that was why he and Anna were together—despite everything each of them had gone through.

And that was enough for him to be sure of what he wanted for the rest of his life.

“And speaking of better,” he said, “dinner was amazing. The chicken was almost as good as my mother’s.” He pushed his chair back from the table. “Thank you _so_ much.”

Joseph polished off the remaining scotch in his glass. “Oh, you’re quite welcome. Coming from you, that’s quite the compliment.”

Anna stood up and stretched her arms above her head, bending backward slightly. She yawned, and it was only then that it hit her how tired she was. “Ma, do you want help with—”

Miriam shook her head. “No need. You look exhausted. What are your plans tomorrow?”

“Oh,” Rafael said, “Anna said something about going to the Getty. Right?” He looked at her.

“Yeah,” she replied. “There’s an exhibit of fashion photography that I am dying to see. Actually, I think you’ll like it too.”

“Let me know how you like it,” Miriam said, beginning to gather the napkins from the table. “Maybe I’ll force your father to go.”

Joseph grimaced. “Or you could just stab me in the eye now and get it over with.”

Anna and Rafael laughed as Miriam swatted him on the arm again. “Are you sure you don’t want help?” Anna asked her mother.

Miriam shot her daughter a look. “Don’t make me chase after you with a dish towel. Scoot!”

“Okay! Fine! I’m going,” Anna said. She and Rafael said their goodnights and headed out the back door toward the guest house. Just before they stepped outside, Rafael stopped.

“You go ahead. I’m going to help your parents with cleanup.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. My mom just threatened to hit me with a dish towel, remember?”

“I want to. Besides,” he said, “she threatened _you_ , not me.”

She shook her head and smiled. “You amaze me. Don’t be too long, okay?”

“I won’t. Promise.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and headed toward the guest house. He waited until she disappeared from view, then went back onto the terrace. Anna’s parents were gathering the remnants of dessert. “Joseph? Miriam?”

“Rafael! What are you doing back out here?” Miriam asked. He walked toward her and took two of the wine glasses from her hands. “You don’t have to—”

“Anna said the same thing, but I insist. It’s the least I can do for you both. You’ve been such wonderful hosts and have been so welcoming toward me.”

She smiled broadly. “It’s been our pleasure.”

Joseph grabbed the wine bottle and the stacked plates from the table. “It’s a shame you can’t stay longer, but we’re glad you managed to get our daughter out here at all.”

“She wanted to see you. I’m just along for the ride.”

The three of them made their way to the kitchen and put the dishes into the sink. “I’ll worry about those tomorrow,” Miriam said. “Do you need anything before we turn in?”

Rafael only hesitated for a second, but Joseph caught it. “Rafael? Something on your mind?”

There wouldn’t be another opportunity to do this, he knew, so he took a deep breath. “Could I talk to you both in the living room for a minute? It won’t take long, but there’s something I need to discuss with you.”

They went into the living room, Rafael waiting until Anna’s parents sat down before he did, on the couch opposite them. He noticed they were holding hands, which he hadn’t seen them do all week. Maybe they realized this was a special occasion before he’d even said anything. Suddenly, he realized he had no idea what to say.

“So,” Joseph began, “what did you want to talk to us about?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, I—first, let me just say again how much I appreciate your hospitality this week. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to take a vacation, and this has been the best one of my life.”

Miriam smiled. “We were glad to have you both here. It’s hard for us to get out to New York City with our work schedules. I just hope we won’t have to wait too long before we see you both again.”

“I hope so, too.” His hands were starting to shake a bit, so he clasped them together to keep it from showing. “You have both treated me like family, even though we’ve only known each other for a few days, and now I understand where Anna gets it.”

“Thank you for saying that,” Joseph said. “We tried to raise our daughter”—he stopped—“our _children_ to be as down to earth as possible, despite having grown up in…well, this.”

Rafael nodded. “To be honest, until just before we decided to come out here, I had no idea exactly how, um…”

“You can say it,” Miriam offered. “Privileged. It’s not a dirty word.”

He laughed, thankful for the break in tension. “It’s certainly different from the way I grew up, as you know.” Then, returning to the matter at hand, he said, “Look, what I wanted to say—Anna, she’s just—she’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. You know the circumstances under which I met her, and—”

They both nodded. “Speaking of that,” Miriam said, “we both want you to know how much we appreciate what you did for her. It was so difficult, not being able to be there. We offered to come out, but she told us not to, and we respected her wishes. But we were worried about her and about the trial.”

“But she assured us that she had some strong people fighting for her,” Joseph added, “and your name came up frequently. Our daughter”—his voice broke just slightly—“is everything to us. Thank you for getting justice for her.”

Rafael shook his head. “I just did my job. Anna was the strong one. _She_ got on the stand. _She_ looked her assailant in the eye and told the world what he did. _She_ decided to move forward with her life, when so many survivors can’t. And having watched her go from there to here has been an honor. And after this week, I know where that strength comes from.”

Joseph nodded, but then cocked his head. “That still doesn’t answer the question. What did you want to talk to us about?”

“Right,” Rafael replied, taking a deep breath. “As I was saying, Anna is the most unbelievable woman I’ve ever known. I’m so thankful that she found her way to me. I’m sorry for the circumstances that led to it, but she’s the best thing in my life. She’s not just beautiful outside. She has one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known, and she makes room in it for everyone. That’s not easy to do after what she’s been through. She makes me laugh every single day and she reminds me not to take life as seriously as I’m prone to do. She’s all I ever wanted in a partner. And for some reason that still escapes me, she loves me, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t thank God for that. She’s changed my life.”

Then, he pulled out a small velvet box from the pocket of his blazer and watched Miriam’s hands fly to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she said behind her hands.

“I’ve been carrying this around all week waiting for the right time to ask her, but then I realized I wanted to tell you both first, because without you, I wouldn’t have her.” He was holding back tears now. “I want to marry your daughter more than anything. I want to have children with her. I’ll take care of her. I’ll give her anything that is in my power to give her. I will keep her safe and love her and protect her with my life if it ever comes to that. And I want to ask her tomorrow, so that we can celebrate with you before we leave.”

Miriam’s eyes brimmed with tears and she suppressed a shriek behind her hands. Joseph’s face remained stoic, but his eyes glimmered behind his glasses. Then he looked at his wife.

“You owe me ten dollars.”

Rafael’s eyebrows shot up as he tucked the ring box back into his pocket. “Well, _that_ wasn’t the reaction I was expecting!”

Miriam started laughing. “I know it sounds terrible, but from the first night you were here, Joseph and I have had a bet going about when you’d finally do it. I thought you’d tell us and then propose to her in New York. Joseph thought you’d do it while you were here.” Then she sprang to her feet and practically ran around the table to hug him. “I’ve never been so glad to lose a bet in my life! Mazel tov, sweetie!”

Joseph stood up from his place on the couch. “You’re not planning to ask my _permission_ , are you?”

Rafael and Miriam both rose to their feet as well. “No, but if—”

“Good.” Joseph extended his hand. “Anna would be livid if she found out you did that. But you do have our blessing.”

Rafael took Joseph’s hand and shook it just as he had when they first met—strong, confident, and relaxed. “Thank you for that. It means the world to me that you’re happy about this.”

“Why _wouldn’t_ we be?” Miriam asked, suddenly concerned.

Rafael looked at the floor for a moment, feeling a bit sheepish. “I was worried that you wouldn’t approve of—well, me, I guess. The age difference, mostly.”

Miriam shook her head emphatically and took his hand. “Listen, we knew your character before you even started seeing her. And after having met you, I am even more sure that you are the man Anna deserves. She loves you, and you very clearly love her. That’s what matters to us.”

“Frankly,” Joseph added, “until you mentioned it just now, I had completely forgotten your age.”

“That’s her influence,” Rafael said. “You wouldn’t have said that if you’d met me a year and a half ago.” He checked his watch. “Oh, hell, I should go. She’s going to get suspicious if I stay out here much longer.”

“Agreed,” Joseph said. He extended his hand again and when Rafael took it, he pulled his future son-in-law in for a quick hug. “Welcome to the family,” he whispered.

Those four words meant the world to Rafael, and he suddenly realized that in just a week, Joseph had become a father to him in a way that his own never was.

Miriam hugged him again too, and he felt a few tears fall onto his shoulder. His heart felt like it would burst out of his chest. He always thought it was silly when men talked to their girlfriends’ parents about this subject, but now he understood how much it meant to have their blessing.

* * *

Rafael and Anna spent the entire next day at the Getty Center, an enormous art museum in Brentwood that housed pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts, as well as photographs from the 1830s through present day from all over the world. The Museum also featured outdoor sculptures on terraces and in the gardens surrounding the building—which were as much a work of art as any of the Museum’s contents. Set on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains, the Museum was made of Italian travertine and filled with natural light.

The exhibition that Anna had mentioned the previous evening, a fashion photography collection entitled Icons of Style, took up a great majority of their afternoon. It included more than one hundred fifty photographs presented alongside a selection of costumes, illustrations, magazine covers, videos, and advertisements spanning a century, from 1911 until 2011. Anna had marveled at the photos from the 1970s, during the sexual revolution; natural beauty was a recurring theme, which spoke to her profoundly. Rafael gravitated toward the bold colors and patterns of the 1970s, although he would have preferred to combine them with the structured, simple suits of the 1950s. Anna joked that Armani should really pay Rafael for how good he made suits look. Rafael laughed and said it wasn’t him that made the suits look good—it was his tailor.

After a stroll through the sculpture and cactus gardens, they found themselves back on one of the terraces overlooking Los Angeles. It was an exceptionally clear day, so in the distance, it was possible to see the mountains rising behind the city, as well as the Pacific Ocean nearby. Anna leaned on the railing of the terrace and looked out over the edge. “People always want to hang around the Observatory,” she said, “but I personally think this is the best view in the entire city.”

He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Actually, I think _I_ have the best view in the entire city.”

She shoved against him playfully. “I like Vacation Rafael. I’m going to miss him when he goes away tomorrow.”

He laughed. “Am I really so uptight back home?”

“No. It’s just—you’re more serious. I think your job makes you that way. Someone told me once that people shouldn’t forget who they are in favor of what they do.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

She turned in his arms and ran a hand through his windblown hair. “You underestimate both my memory and your insight.”

The sunset cast a halo around her silhouette and her ocean-blue eyes seemed brighter than usual. The smile she gave him was radiant, carefree, and so unbelievably joyful. Seeing her happy filled his heart in a way he didn’t know was possible. There were moments when he realized just how much he loved her, and, even better, how much she loved him. This was one of them. She literally took his breath away.

All of a sudden, he felt goosebumps dot his skin. “I love you so much,” he whispered, without even meaning to.

She must have seen him shiver because she cocked her head and ran her hands down his arms. “Are you cold?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s just—” He looked down and then raised his eyes, meeting hers through his thick, dark lashes, silently trying to communicate what he wanted to say.

“ _Mi amor_ ,” she said quietly, “I have many talents, but mind reading isn’t one of them.” She was trying to get him to smile, but he seemed uncharacteristically nervous.

He hadn’t planned it this way. He never thought he would do this in public, especially in front of people. But this moment was too perfect. _She_ was too perfect. “I need to tell you something.”

Her breath caught in her chest. “Well, that scares me.”

He shook his head again. “No, it’s—it’s not bad, not at all. It’s just—this isn’t how I planned to tell you all this, but it seems like the right time.” He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself as he started to tell her what he’d practiced a million times in his head, as if it was a closing argument. “You know, before you, I never used to sleep very well. I tossed and turned a lot. I think my mind just never shut off. I didn’t think about anything but work, and I think it—it got to me. I had nightmares a lot. Things no one should ever have to see, I had to look at every single day. They’d play over in my head constantly.”

It was heartbreaking for her to imagine him as he was before she’d met him, _knew_ him. How lonely that life must have been, how isolated. “And now?”

“I haven’t had a nightmare since the moment I realized I loved you,” he replied. “I know it sounds corny. But it’s the truth, Anna. You have no idea how much comfort you bring me, how much happier I am just for knowing you.”

Anna felt like she might cry. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Raf.”

He looked into her eyes, as he had done thousands of times, but it felt like the first time all over again. “I’ve only ever loved one other woman in my life, and she…” He shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter. I never felt about her—about _anyone—_ the way I feel about you.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

His eyes never left hers and she watched the way they reacted to the light, making his irises brighter and darker at the same time. He licked his lips and took another deep breath. “When I came home to tell you about this suspension, I was so sure that you would be disappointed in me, or angry with me for not telling you about the whole mess. I wouldn’t have blamed you in the least. But you shocked the hell out of me—first with your compassion and your tenderness and your understanding, and then with what you shared with me about your brother. You made me feel less alone. That meant so much to me.”

She smiled. “I told you. It’s me and you against the world.”

He nodded. “That night after you went to bed, I went for a walk. I wanted to clear my head and figure out what I should be doing with my life. But all I kept thinking about was what we talked about, how you reacted, and—” He felt tears start falling. “See, this is what I mean. I don’t cry in front of people. Not my mom, not my friends, no one—except you. Because that’s how much I trust you and how much I know you love me.”

Anna was stunned. Rafael had shown her so much vulnerability since she had gotten home from Nashville the previous month. She felt like they had become closer than ever. _Maybe that fight was a good thing_ , she thought.

“I do,” she whispered, putting her hand to his cheek. But something still seemed to be tugging at his heart. He took her hand in his and kissed her palm.

“When your case was over, I never expected to see you again. I certainly never expected to fall in love with you. I even tried to stop it. That day in my office when you told me off for judging your career choices, I nearly kissed you, but my brain was screaming at me. ‘It’s inappropriate. She’s too young. You’re too old. She’ll never be interested. This is only professional.’ But when you showed up at my door and kissed me, you showed me that everything I thought I knew about life was wrong. Breakfast can be at midnight. Disney movies aren’t so bad. I can have as much fun eating ice cream sandwiches with my girlfriend as I can having illicit sex with her in the bathroom of a bar.”

She blushed at the memory. “I don’t know if I’d say it’s as much fun—”

“Shush,” he said, a teasing tone in his voice. “As I was saying, I learned all of those things about the world—about myself—over the last year and a half, just from being with you.” He flashed her a smile, one that broke her heart in the best way. “ _Mi amor_ , you said the things we expect least change our lives the most. You were the most unexpected thing I could have imagined. You changed my life. And you’ve become the center of it.”

And then, Rafael Eduardo Barba—king of the courtroom, once made of nothing but sarcasm and scotch, a man who had taught himself not to open his heart to anyone—ignored everyone else on that terrace, took both her hands in his, and lowered himself to one knee.

The moon could have come hurtling down at her and Anna wouldn’t have even looked up. The people around her disappeared, even though they were all watching. What she was focused on were the two jungle-green eyes below her, full of hope and love and even a little fear. She suddenly became acutely aware of how her heart was beating, so hard that she was sure he could see it under her dress. It was like all her senses had suddenly been heightened.

“Are you doing what I think you’re doing?” It was a rhetorical question; she knew precisely what he was doing.

His expression was unreadable; she had never seen him look at her this way. “Anna, I know I am a very difficult man to love, and I haven’t always been the partner you deserve. But if you’ll let me, I’ll wake up every day for the rest of my life trying to be that man.” He took another deep breath; even though he was pretty sure she would say yes, he figured every man got nervous before he asked this question. “You have my heart. I don’t think I could get it back even if I wanted to. I told you that soulmates choose each other every day, even when it’s hard. You’re my soulmate, Anna Ruth Stein, and I’m completely in love with you. Will you choose me for the rest of your life?”

Anna had always imagined the way she would react to a proposal. She thought it might be like the movies, where the woman either doesn’t react for a moment or immediately bursts into tears. Neither of those things happened. She suddenly realized she had been holding her breath. As she let it out, she felt a smile overtake her, but she shook her head no. “I won’t choose you for the rest of my life.” Before he had time to panic, she added, “I’ll choose you _forever_.”

 _Then_ she burst into tears.

He dropped his forehead to their joined hands, and she felt his own tears fall onto them. Then, he looked up at her, smiling as wide as she’d ever seen. “Do you mind if I do the next part standing up?”

“Kneeling, standing, sitting, I don’t care! Just kiss me first!” she replied, pulling him to his feet amongst the claps and cheers of the onlookers. Once he was upright, he wrapped an arm around her waist and yanked her into him. She laughed at the force and laid her hands on his chest, one of them over his heart. He drew her to his lips and wrapped his fingers in her hair, not even caring about all the people watching them. Usually, when he kissed her like this, what followed was the overwhelming urge to take her to bed. This time, all he was thinking about was how deeply in love he was and how happy he would be when he saw her walking down an aisle toward him.

After he broke away, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the box he had been carrying around the entire trip. He fumbled a bit as he opened it, and realized his hands were shaking as much as hers.

“For you,” he said, simply and quietly.

Unlike most of her friends, Anna didn’t have an idea of a “perfect” engagement ring, but if she had, this would have been it. What she saw in that box was the most stunning piece of jewelry she had ever laid eyes on. It was a round, 1.5 karat diamond, with a halo of smaller, pink stones set against a platinum band. It wasn’t over the top, but it was gorgeous, and, more importantly, it was from him.

“Oh my God, it’s beautiful!” she cried. “What are the—”

He took the ring out of the box and held her shaking left hand. “The center stone is obviously a diamond, which is, conveniently, your birthstone,” he said, kissing her knuckles. “And the stones around it are pink tourmaline— _my_ birthstone. I had it made in January. I already knew I wanted to marry you; moving in together was just a formality.”

She couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t just _bought_ her a gorgeous ring—he had _designed_ a gorgeous ring. Three years ago, she felt shattered. Three years ago, she wanted nothing to do with men. Three years ago, she felt like she might literally die of a broken heart. How had she managed to find this unbelievable person who thought she was so special that she deserved a ring that no one else would ever have? Then again, she realized, he’d given her a love no one else would ever have. She put herself back together somehow. She got her life back. But together, they had built a new one.

“This is, without a doubt, the most extra thing you have ever done, and _that_ is saying something,” she said, laughing. “It’s amazing. Where did you get the idea to do this?”

He smiled and slipped the ring onto her finger. “I told you, Anna, you’re the center of my world. I wanted you to have something that will always remind you of that.”


End file.
